So Buffy Met Jack
by Frosted Failure
Summary: After spending a few weeks trapped in an extratemporal holding cell together, Captain Jack Harkness offered Buffy Summers a job at Torchwood. And how could she ever turn down an offer like that? Post-Buffy S7/Torchwood S2
1. Day One, Take 2 - Part 1

Inspired by interactions in the Hotel California Panfandom RPG on LiveJournal, this is a joint project between two women who adored the idea of Jack recruiting Buffy to Torchwood. Perhaps they adored it a little too much, but that remains to be seen.

**Authors:** Amy (Frosted Failure) & Sarah (magicom LiveJournal); later guest writing by Dani (colorofangels LiveJournal)  
**Spoilers:** Through _Buffy_ / _Angel_ series finales and _Torchwood_ Series 2 / _Doctor Who_ Series 4.  
**Rating:** FR-15  
**Pairing:** Jack/Ianto, Buffy/Spike, Gwen/Rhys  
**Disclaimer:** Everything is owned by Joss/Fox and Russell/BBC!  
**Summary:** After spending a few weeks trapped in an extratemporal holding cell together, Captain Jack Harkness offered Buffy Summers a job at Torchwood. And how could she ever turn down an offer like that?

**DAY ONE, TAKE 2 - Part 1**

Buffy Summers had never liked rain. She was a California Girl, born and raised, and enjoyed sun, long walks on the beach, and being able to wear whatever sort of clothing she chose and count on the weather for cooperation.

She could see that this was not going to be the case in Cardiff.

She'd gotten off her plane and stepped outside to be greeted by soaked jeans and squishy boots. She didn't think designer boots were isupposed/i to squish, and so she contemplated giving Jack a bill to pay for replacements, but he'd probably just flirt his way out of it. It would get her back into a good mood though, so might be worth a try.

First stop had been the tiny apartment the New Council had found for her and was actually going to pay for, as part of her "retirement" package. Not officially retired, of course, she'd still be on call for apocalypses and local Europe weirdness that needed professional backup, but for all intents and purposes, she was now fully employed by the Torchwood Institute. The thought made her perk right up.

The rain had stopped when she left her apartment, so, being used to Ohio weather where stopped rain stayed stopped, she didn't take an umbrella with her. Big mistake. Halfway to her new place of employment, the skies opened up and laughed at her. She was sure she looked like a drowned rat when she stepped into the little office that was supposed to cater to tourists. A drowned rat in designer clothing who was ready to hop a plane back to the States.

Jack had better have been telling the truth about that Coffee God.

**III**

Ianto Jones was standing at his counter in the Mermaid Quay tourist office, absently flipping through an old magazine, when she entered. He looked up when he heard the door open. Jack hadn't really told him what to expect, per se. Their leader had disappeared mysteriously a short time before and reappeared equally mysteriously a couple of weeks after that. It wasn't that Ianto didn't believe his report about being abducted into an extratemporal holding cell, along with other people from throughout time and, apparently, space... they'd encountered far stranger things. It was just a little shocking for Jack to then add "Oh yeah, and I hired someone." Jack was the boss, he could hire whomever he wanted to. If he wanted to hire some American woman he met in an extratemporal prison, that was entirely his prerogative. It was just... well, it had been _Jack_ that had been dragging his feet about finding people to fill the vacant positions that had belonged to the fallen Tosh and Owen. And now? The mood he came back from his abduction in, you'd think he'd been on holiday.

Ianto straightened up as Buffy approached the counter. He was about to greet her, but realized that Jack hadn't even mentioned her name to them. "You must be the new recruit," he said diplomatically.

"That's me," Buffy answered with a smile, then cringed as she squished a little more. "I'm kinda drippy everywhere, sorry," she apologized, looking down at the small puddle quickly forming around her on the carpeted floor. "Not quite used to Cardiff's weather mood swings yet."

At least her leather jacket had offered a little protection from the downpour, so her shirt underneath was only slightly damp. She was ready to count any blessings at that point - the office had some good air conditioning, and she only imagined it would get worse in the _underground_ base the good Captain was so fond of.

Speaking of... Ooh, desk boy must be the _boyfriend_! That brought out a smile. "Ianto Jones, right?" she asked brightly, holding out a damp hand. "I'm Buffy Summers."

He peered wordlessly and slightly distastefully over the counter when she mentioned the dripping, then frowned ever so slightly when she addressed him by name. First of all, how did she know him by _sight_? Second of all... _Buffy_? Was that short for something? He didn't ask.

"Of course," he said, shaking her hand. He pressed the button under the counter that locked the Tourist Office door and opened the secret door in the wall. "It's just this way," he told her, stepping forward and standing to the side of the opening in the wall so she could precede him.

Buffy's grin widened a little as the nifty 'secret passage' was revealed and headed right inside, ready to see what Jack had so avidly described during their days stuck in that way too elegant hotel from hell. They headed down a hall and then into an elevator; everything looked old and... Europey. Not like old pretty Europe, but new grungy Europe. She liked it.

While the elevator took them down, she turned a smile on Ianto and said, "By the way, secret underground base? _So_ cool. Much better than a castle in Scotland, in my opinion."

A _castle_ in _Scotland_? What was she _talking_ about? He gave her the small, tight smile he used on most people when he was being polite. "Yes, it's much easier to keep things a secret when they're buried under the city," he agreed.

Ooh, she knew that smile. That was the kind of smile Giles wore around the mini-Slayers when they were getting on his nerves but he was still trying to be polite. It had to be a British thing. With Welsh relatives.

The elevator came to a stop before she could think of something not-annoying-American-y, and then there was the giant rolling door thing Jack had mentioned... And then whoa. She walked forward, her boots clomping on the stone and grating, and grinned. Glancing around the massive Hub, taking in all the lights and the water and grime that really was kinda charming, she saw a bit of movement up in a glassed-off office. Aha! "Jack Harkness, get your time-traveling butt down here!" she yelled with a laugh, hands on her hips as she waited for her new 'employer'.

Jack laughed happily as he jogged down from his office. He noticed Ianto standing behind her, the expression on his face telling Jack that he really was doing his level-best not to roll his eyes.

"Gwen!" Jack shouted to get his second-in-command's attention from where she was working at her computer, before giving Buffy a huge hug.

Buffy returned the enthusiastic hug, absolutely ecstatic at being reunited with someone who had quickly become one of her best friends, then tried to give a good first impression as she met his other team member. She was fairly certain she could have done better if she hadn't still been dripping.

"Welcome to Cardiff," he said brightly. "You've met Ianto," he confirmed. He gestured towards the brunette that approached the group. "This is Gwen Cooper." He looked between Gwen and Ianto. "This is Buffy, the Vampire Slayer."

Giving Gwen a little wave, she was about to say something that hopefully wasn't too 'stupid American' when a swooshing noise came from overhead and she glanced up... "You _really_ do have a pet pterodactyl!" she exclaimed, absolutely beaming at Jack in excitement. "iAnd/i a secret underground base and cute personal Coffee God! I am so glad I changed careers."  
Jack had to actively suppress a smile as Buffy babbled and he caught Ianto's eyes just above and behind her head - eyes that moved quickly from a sort of startled mortification into promising future retribution of some sort.

Ianto cleared his throat as he stepped towards his work station. "So. Vampire Slayer. Is that hyphenated?" Jack shot him a look. "For her personnel record," he answered dryly.

Buffy was still smiling as she glanced at Ianto at a very neat looking computer setup. Even the Council didn't have stuff that looked that high-tech, though, really, most of their stuff was magic-enhanced, so it didn't really have to be the newest and shiniest. "No hyphen," she answered, ignoring the feeling of 'huh?' coming from the room. "Just lots of capitals. And a 'the', don't forget the 'the'." It was very important, she had _earned_ that the!

Gwen, who had been willing to accept aliens and rifts in time and space, was apparently not so easily accepting of the undead, even after having worked with a dead man for a period of time. "When you say _vampire_," she started in a slow, heavily accented voice, "you don't mean those people who go around all in black clothes listening to strange music, do you?"

Jack was watching Gwen try to wrap her mind around the whole vampire thing when Ianto answered.

"I'll just put 'Summers'," he said tightly, taking some papers out of a drawer.

Jack turned around. "Aw, she already told you her last name? I was looking forward to signing off on Buffy The Vampire Slayer's personnel sheet."

Ianto didn't favour that with a glance, but merely continued what he was doing, so Jack returned his attention to Gwen.

"She means _vampires_," he clarified. "Undead bloodsuckers of legend. She used to live on the Mouth of Hell. This sort of thing came up there the way that aliens come up here."

"Probably more," Buffy agreed with a nod, watching the other woman frown and stuggle with the concept. "We did have 12 cemeteries, and it was kinda the Demon Vacation Spot."

Gwen continued her frowning and crossed her arms, as if that would help her think better. "And they _killed_ people, yes? That's what vampires do, right? Kill people, or make other... vampires," she ended dully, feeling ever so stupid for even having the conversation.

Buffy couldn't help the chuckle that escaped as she shoved her hands into her jacket's pockets. "Yep, kill people, make more vamps, and try to end the world," she said brightly, like she was talking about a pretty garden and not evil undead things. "That's pretty much their MO."

"And how don't other people _know_ about this?" Gwen pressed, thinking about the spaceships over London and the disaster at Canary Wharf. Coverups maybe?

Ianto snorted from behind his paperwork. "They said Canary Wharf was destroyed by a gas leak, and people believed it. Even with a Cyberman in every home and Daleks raining death over half of London. Those, incidentally, were mass hallucinations, in case you didn't get the memo."

Jack rasied an eyebrow. Ianto was in quite a mood this morning, though he had a point. "I expect the vampires didn't routinely kill large numbers of people at the same time," he said, looking to Buffy for confirmation. "It wouldn't be hard to construct a cover up for a somewhat higher than the national average mortality rate."

Buffy lost a bit of her cheer at Ianto's mood, as well as the subject matter at hand. They'd followed the news of what had happened at Canary Wharf, and one of the mini-Slayers had lost someone in the disaster. Even across an ocean, they paid attention when the world was threatened, and they all had respect for their fellow fighters who were just trying to keep it safe.

"There was usually at least one mass killing a month, when some Big Bad rolled into town, much as we tried to stop it in time," she said in a serious tone, talking shop now and not even trying a little bit to show off. "The little stuff was explained by people falling on barbecue forks or gangs on PCP. The local cops weren't the brightest, and people in Sunnydale were pretty good at ignoring the bump in the nights."

Gwen, too, had sobered even more at Ianto's words, her quest for answers and understanding dimming a bit until Buffy mentioned something that caught her attention. "Sunnydale?" she repeated with a look of confusion. "I've heard that name before... Something about a... sinkhole?"

"Cover story," Ianto said flatly.

Jack gave him a sterner glance, but Ianto was still looking down at his work... though Jack suspected that didn't mean he didn't see it.

"Everyone is pretty good at ignoring things that go bump in the night. It's how they get _through_ the night," Jack said, giving Buffy's shoulder a squeeze.

Buffy set her hand on Jack's for a moment, meeting his gaze and once again feeling so very grateful for having met him in the Hellton. Someone who understood and knew her and didn't expect everything to be perfect... She just hoped things stayed as wonderful as they had started.

"So," she started, forcing light back into her voice and a smile onto her face, "are you gonna show me around your humble abode or what? I had to hear about it for weeks and now you keep me stranded in the _lobby_? So unfair."

Jack grinned. "You have to admit," he said, spreading his arms from emphasis, "the lobby is pretty impressive." He looked over at Gwen. "Would you please give Buffy the VIP guided tour?" he asked politely. He turned and looked at Ianto, who was bent studiously over his work. "Can I talk to you for a second?" he asked equally politely, though it was very slightly strained this time. He headed for his office without waiting for a reply. Ianto glanced up, his eyes lighting just briefly on Buffy and Gwen before finding Jack's retreating back. He put down his pen and pushed away from his desk, heading up the small staircase a couple of feet behind Jack.

Gwen watched Jack and Ianto head off with a slightly concerned frown before turning to Buffy. "Right then, tour time, yes?" she said with a broad smile, the charming gap between her front teeth seeming to widen with the grin. "Showing you all the dark corners and hidden secrets of the Hub."

Buffy snorted and glanced up at Jack's office. "I'm surprised it isn't 'dark secret make-out' corners with Jack," she joked in that way that only people who really _knew_ Jack could.

Gwen laughed and decided she liked their new teammate. A bit odd, and very American, but Jack liked her and that was enough for Gwen. "Oh, he has some of those, too," she told Buffy with comically wide eyes. "Careful wandering round this place on your own in the middle of the night when you know Jack and Ianto are both still here."

Buffy shook her head with a smirk. "And they say there's no danger in the workplace," she mused, then shared a laugh with Gwen before setting off to begin the tour.


	2. Day One, Take 2 - Part 2

**DAY ONE, TAKE 2 - Part 2**

Jack turned and sat at his desk. Whatever Ianto felt about what Jack was sure he knew Jack wanted to discuss, Jack couldn't read it as Ianto entered the room. Ianto's face had assumed that implacable mask he was capable of slipping into whenever it suited him.

Jack waited for him to sit down.

Jack sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers as Ianto took his seat and regarded Jack placidly.

"What's bothering you?" Jack inquired with a balance of warmth and authority. He knew Ianto well and was well aware that there was no point in beating around the bush with the young archivist. He was content to stare at you placidly and answer exactly the questions you asked.

If, on the other hand, you asked the right questions, he was perfectly candid. He hadn't, in fact, lied to Jack one single time since the day the creature that had once been Lisa Hallett was discovered in the Hub's basement.

"Who is this woman, Jack?" he asked, the very slightest hint of irritation in his voice. "And why does she know everything about us, but we didn't even know her _name_?"

Ah. It wasn't Buffy herself or the fact that Jack had hired her that was causing the issue. It was the fact that Ianto had gotten the sense that Jack was holding out on them... and, perhaps more pointedly, _not_ similarly holding out on the newly arrived American import.

"We were stuck in that place for two weeks," Jack explained, leaning forward in his chair. "There was a lot of downtime. We chatted."

"You've been back for three days," Ianto pointed out. Jack didn't have a response to that, so he continued. "What does she ido/i?" Ianto asked. "Why is she here?"

"After what happened..." his voice trailed off. They still had trouble talking about it in specific terms. All of them did. "We need someone who specializes in armed and hand to hand combat. An enforcer, of sorts. Buffy can more than handle herself and she was looking to make a career change." He shrugged. "It just worked out."

Ianto nodded slowly, taking this in. "So," he said ponderously. "You hired a ninety pound girl to _protect_ us," he confirmed.

"She's a vampire slayer," Jack said, as if that explained everything.

"Which means what, exactly?" Ianto said flatly.

"Super strength, super agility, accelerated healing..." Jack said, listing the abilities Buffy had mentioned to him off the top of his head.

"So you hired a _superhero_ to protect us," Ianto said dryly, revising his earlier observation.

"Essentially," Jack agreed evenly.

"Do you want me to go upstairs and wait for Superman and Wolverine to arrive?" Ianto asked, completely deadpan.

"I'd never hire Wolverine," Jack replied, matching Ianto's tone. "I wouldn't want any guy working here who looks better in jeans than I do."

"You never wear jeans," Ianto pointed out.

"It's the principle of the thing."

The key to winning these sorts of conversations with Ianto was to not be the first person to crack a smile. Jack almost always lost.

They silently held each other's gaze for a moment.

"Coffee God?" Ianto asked, raising an eyebrow inquisitively.

Jack shrugged almost self-consciously. "I missed you," he explained simply.

Ianto's expression didn't change, but it did seem to soften slightly.

"I can have her on the system by the end of the day," he told Jack.

Jack nodded. Ianto stood, but Jack stopped him as he turned to go.

"Are we good?" he asked.

Ianto nodded curtly and left the office. Jack sat back in his chair and exhaled.

**III**

Buffy and Gwen had been having much the same conversation, albeit a little more round-about and less irritated, as they made their way through the Hub. Between short explanations of what went on where, and what the hell a Weevil was (Buffy thought it looked like a demon, possibly a cousin to the vampire - she _had_ to remember to tell Spike that one), Gwen slipped in a few questions about how Buffy knew so much about what they did.

Buffy, for her part, was surprised the woman managed to be so calm about it. But that probably came from working with the police prior to Torchwood recruitment, and non-Sunnydale police seemed to actually know what they were doing. And she wasn't the least bit surprised that Jack hadn't filled his team him on much more than 'newbie coming'; it didn't seem to be his style. She wondered if he'd gotten the memo that that _really_ wasn't going to fly with her. He already knew she didn't do guns.

When they reached the final stop on their seemingly endless tour - the place was huge!, Buffy felt her heart sink into her stomach. That couldn't be what she thought it was. It had to be extra filing space or something... Yeah, right, Buffy, filing space for dead bodies.

"These are the cryo-chambers," Gwen explained a little awkwardly, the thought of Tosh's body being in there making it a little more difficult to talk about. "Torchwood employees are put here after their death, and there are some living persons and aliens in there for safekeeping right now..." Her voice trailed off as she noticed the look on Buffy's face. Serious, hard, determined. And perhaps just a little bit scared. "You alright?" she questioned with genuine concern, reaching out to touch the other woman's arm.

Well. Jack certainly hadn't mentioned that.

Buffy glanced away from the rows of drawers to look at Gwen, unable to force any sort of light into her eyes as she put a tiny smile on her face. A mask, of course, one that her teammates would likely be quick to decipher. "Perfectly," she lied with ease. "Just thought of something I need to tell Jack."

"Oh," Gwen answered, her brow slightly furrowed as she surveyed the American woman. "Well, he and Ianto should be done with their meeting-" And she practically had to jog to keep up with Buffy as she hurried from the room.

**III**

Jack smiled brightly at Buffy as she strode into his office, but his expression faltered when he saw hers. "How did the tour go?" he asked warily.

She forced a big grin, one of those ones that looked kind of painful and did not ever bode well for the recipient. She heard Gwen coming up behind her and chose to ignore the other woman's presence.

"So you have aliens in the basement _and_ a morgue," she said with false cheerfulness. "What, were you just trying to make me feel more at home?"

Jack just looked at her for a moment. Of all the things to object to, he didn't think it would be the basic storage facilities. "And what did you _imagine_ we did with the dangerous aliens that we have to capture or kill?" he asked in a measured tone. "They have to be kept someplace. You didn't think we shipped dead Nostravites down to the coroner's office, did you?"

Buffy waved her hand dismissively. "No, no, no problem with that," she told him in a deceptively carefree voice. "Gotta put the oogies somewhere when they don't go poof, I completely understand that." She moved to sit in the chair in front of his desk, crossing her legs and resting folded hands on her lap. "What I _do_ have a problem with is the idea of _me_ eventually being put in one of those things." And then all the cheer and smiles were gone and she was completely serious.

Jack leaned forward in his chair, folding his hands in front of him on his desk. "The regulations that stipulate the storage of active employees killed in the line of duty are in place because, when active employees _are_ killed in the line of duty, they generally tend to be killed by things the outside world can't explain and should never see. It goes with the secrecy thing." He held up his hand for a moment, to indicate that his explanation wasn't the end of what he had to say. "_If_, however, you object to it that strenuously, I believe we can come to an alternate arrangement, as long as it's laid out in advance and doesn't compromise the secrecy of our organization itself or the secrets that it protects. Feel free to draw something up and I'll be happy to look at it."

Buffy uncrossed her legs and leaned forward in her chair, looking Jack directly in the eye with a look that pleaded for understanding. "I understand the need for keeping secrets, Jack," she told him with a voice filled with reason, "really, you're not the only one who's had experience with secret organizations. But I told you about my friends bringing me back from the dead," there was a gasp from Gwen behind her and she could picture the woman's comically shocked expression, "and I refuse to let that happen again."

"Oh, _believe_ me," Jack said, not wavering from her gaze, "we don't do that anymore." He let out a small, scoffing laugh. "In fact, we couldn't if we wanted to. We don't have the equipment." He paused for a moment, then continued. "We _store_ the bodies there. If you're only worried about the one thing, we'll throw a 'Do Not Resurrect' clause into your contract, if you like. If, on the other hand, you really, _really_ don't want to be stored there at all, draw up an alternative, like I said." He shrugged. "I'm not sure what else I can offer, in that regard."

"Just because you're not the one doing it," she quietly told him, "doesn't mean someone else won't. I have it on good authority that 90% of the demon population in this dimension would be more than happy to bring me back just to torture me. Because I'm the Slayer." She could practically _hear_ Gwen's confusion from the doorway. "But thank you, I'll get the paperwork to you tomorrow."

Jack shrugged lightly. "Don't mention it. I promise I'll sign off on it a lot faster than most of the stuff Ianto brings me," he said with a wink. Then Ianto appeared in the doorway, as if summoned. He had several file folders under his arm and a tray in his other hand. He glanced around at his three colleagues, perhaps briefly wondering if he was interrupting something, then cleared his throat. He set the tray down on the desk, distributing the three mugs on it to Jack, Gwen and Buffy. He managed a small, somewhat less tight, smile in Buffy's direction when he handed her the nonfat mocha latte with chocolate sprinkles on top that he'd made her. Jack, perhaps, would have called it the peace-offering smile if he'd gotten to the point of labeling Ianto's smiles. It wouldn't be a time-consuming job, as Ianto Jones smiled neither easily nor often.

Drinks distributed, Ianto took the file folders out from under his arm and set the first one in front of Jack. "Expenses and requisitions from the last fortnight," he said. Jack nodded and put it to the side.

"You need to sign them, Jack."

"I will."

"This week."

Jack gave Buffy a small 'told-you-so' smile and shrug.

Ianto set the next folder in front of Jack. "This is the agenda and relevant documents for your conference call this afternoon."

Jack furrowed his brow in confusion. "What?"

Ianto rolled his eyes. "With the Prime Minister and the head of UNIT. At one o'clock."

Jack looked at his watch. "Really?"

Ianto took a careful, controlled breath. "I told you three weeks ago and reminded you yesterday."

"What was I doing at the time?" Jack asked, a slightly mischievous smile playing at the corners of his lips.

Ianto ignored the comment and opened the file. "UNIT wants to amend several clauses in the interagency cooperation agreement," Ianto explained. "Most of them concern the military and local law enforcement. I've highlighted the sections that concern us," he said, pulling one sheet of paper out of the pile and placing it on top.

Jack looked up at him a little flirtatiously. "What would I do without you?" he joked.

"It's a toss-up between dying of caffeine deprivation and being smothered under a mountain of empty pizza boxes," Ianto replied without missing a beat. "I'll set up the call in the conference room for you," he added.

Ianto turned to Buffy and placed the last folder in front of her. He opened it and indicated a large section of the first page that hadn't been filled in in his tidy handwriting. "You need to fill in this section," he told her. It was personal information. Birth date, bank details, next of kin, etc. The usual. He turned to the second page. "Then sign here," he told her, pointing to a line at the bottom.

Buffy took the offered coffee mug with an 'ooh' expression, taking a hesitant sip and then nearly melting into a happy puddle of happiness right then and there, all over Jack's floor. That had to be the best nonfat mocha latte she'd ever tasted in her entire life. And it had sprinkles! Little chocolate sprinkles. And had come with a smile that she knew meant things were at least a little better. She'd have to remember to thank Jack for that later, too.

Then Ianto was handing her paperwork and pointing things out and she had a much better idea of who Ianto Jones was. He was a Coffee God, a sarcasm fiend according to Jack's stories, and a stickler for paperwork. Smiling up at him, she sweetly said, "I'll get right on it, as soon as I'm finished building a shrine to your coffee greatness. Seriously. I've learned never to mess with paperwork-people, especially when they make insanely yummy coffee."

"In that case, we'll get along fine," Ianto said mildly. He looked at Jack. "One o'clock, Jack," he said, a slight warning tone in his voice as he turned towards the door.

"Alright, alright," Jack said, waving him off. "Just make sure there's an entire _thermos_ of the industrial strength coffee waiting for me," he instructed. Ianto nodded, but kept walking. "And paracetamol!" Jack called as Ianto disappeared out the door.

He looked from Gwen to Buffy and back. "I hate talking to the Prime Minister," he said. "And I _really_ hate talking to the head of UNIT."

Gwen didn't have to say anything or even give Jack a look before he looked at her defensively. "He thinks he's better than me!" Jack told her. "It's really annoying. And he's got bad hair," he added absently as he began riffling through the papers on his desk. "Where's my pen?" he asked nobody in particular.

Buffy watched him moving the papers and after a moment noticed a difference in weight as a few pages shifted; a second later she was plucking a pen from the chaos and holding it out to him.

"I wasn't a big fan when I met him either," she said in response to the jab at the head of UNIT. "Definitely big-headed. He clearly thought he should be dealing with someone taller."

Gwen felt like her head had just fallen off and rolled over into the corner and her expression gave it away in plain detail. "When did _you_ meet the head of UNIT?" she asked Buffy, though demanded might have been the better term.

The blonde gave a shrug. "I was Head Slayer for six years," she explained, as if that said it all. "Lots of meetings with lots of boring people."

Jack cheerfully accepted the pen from Buffy and took a languorous sip of his coffee as she explained her credentials to Gwen. "_Head_ Slayer," he emphasized, shuffling through some forms Ianto had brought him to sign well before the ones that he'd set on Jack's desk that morning. "I'm not about to bring any old Slayer in here."

Buffy snickered and turned to fully address Gwen, happily sipping her coffee and making sure not to spill any on her paperwork. "Used to be the one and only," she told the other woman who looked as if her eyes might start spinning at any moment. "Long story short, we've got about 800 active girls now around the world."

Gwen's frown returned and she glanced at Jack with a question. "Girls?" Generally, if and when she ever thought about vampire slayers types, she assumed big burly men with crossbows, like in the movies.

Jack shrugged. He'd accepted the idea that Vampire Slayers were pretty much exclusively ninety pound girls, as Ianto had put it, pretty easily. "They're all girls," he simply said. "Now they can do some slaying and Buffy can have a change of scenery," he added, shooting Buffy a dazzling smile before returning his attention to the documents in front of him. After a few moments, he glanced up again, realizing Gwen was still standing there. "Thanks, Gwen," he said, though not unkindly. "You can go back to your work now."

Gwen stood there for a moment longer, looking like she was going to argue about something, then just shook her head a little, turned, and walked away.

Buffy watched her go, then returned to fully facing Jack. After another giant gulp of tasty coffee beverage, she took a deep breath and asked, "So bossman," there might have been a bit of teasing there, "what am I supposed to do after I play Paperwork Girl?"


	3. Day One, Take 2 - Part 3

**DAY ONE, TAKE 2 - Part 3**

Jack checked off the approval on the expense report in front of him, then signed it at the bottom with a flourish before looking up at Buffy. "Ianto will issue you with a security pass before the end of the day," he told her. "That will allow you to come and go as you please and you won't need an escort to get in like you did this morning," he said with a smile.

His expression became a little more serious. "He'll also be issuing you a firearm. Don't yell at him, I told him to do it. I know you made your stance on guns pretty clear, but I want you to carry one and you'll have to know how to use it, even if you never do. Have you ever fired a handgun before?"

Security passes were something she was _very_ familiar with, though she doubted these would be magically encrypted like the ones at the New Council HQ, but the latter part of his words did not leave her smiling. "Yeah," she answered quietly, "once or twice. Don't worry," she quickly added, giving him a ilook/i, "I'm a perfect shot. Kinda part of the Slayer package, we're automatically amazing with weapons."

"Good," Jack said simply. The corner of his mouth twitched up slightly. "Of course, any _other_ weapons you deem necessary in the execution of your duties will be entirely at your discretion," he assured her. "But if you need to purchase something, you have to get the requisition forms from Ianto first, or he will _not_ reimburse you. And, just a heads up, sulking doesn't work on him... or pouting. Suggestive comments, on the other hand, will _distract_ him temporarily, but don't, ultimately, sway his decisions regarding Hub-related paperwork." Jack pretended to go back to studying his paperwork. "Just FYI."

Buffy managed to keep a straight face for all of twenty seconds and she was _very_ proud of herself for it. "Okay, I'll keep that in mind," she managed between giggles, having to set her mug on the edge of his desk so she didn't spill the delicious brown liquid everywhere.

"Luckily, for everyone involved, I brought two giant trunks of weapons with me, and can have more magicked here from the NC with about ten minutes notice. Including that pretty pretty scythe I told you about," she explained with a beaming grin. She loved that weapon, and had only left it behind because the other Slayers would probably have more of a pressing need for it than she would, unless more alien demons popped up.

Jack nodded. "You can store those trunks of weapons here, if you want. I presume Gwen showed you the armoury? There's lots of space if you want them to hand."

Buffy nodded and picked up her mug again. "Armoury was seen, and found very lacking," she informed him. "You don't even have a rocket launcher! I had one of those when I was seventeen and you guys have been around for... what, a gazillion years? Tsk, tsk."

"First of all, Torchwood's only been around for 150 years or so," he corrected. "And second of all - you haven't seen our armoury in action. Some of those weapons are alien in origin. We have a couple that are the _size_ of an assault rifle with the _power_ of a rocket launcher."

He was quiet for a moment, signed another document and set it to the side. "Look, about your arrival... the issue Ianto had was with _me_, not with you," he told her carefully. "I want to make sure you understand that. I really think you two will get along well, it just takes him a bit of time to warm up to people."

Her hands wrapped around the still warm mug and nodded slowly. "I get it, Jack," she told him gently, wanting him to know that she harbored no ill feelings toward his boyfriend. "Especially with what happened... Unless someone throws sharp objects at me without me asking for it, I'm not taking any of it personally."

Jack smiled and cocked his head slightly before leaning forward and propping his chin on his hand. "Are there circumstances in which you'd be inclined to ask for something like that?" he asked, intrigued.

She narrowed her eyes at him warily. "Maybe," she said slowly, turning her head slightly like she was waiting for him to reveal a motive. Well, she knew the motive - it was _Jack_. "I've kinda gotten out of a training routine with the mostly desk job and meetingsness. Back in the field, need to get back into shape."

Jack leaned forward a bit further to peer over the desk at her. "You look pretty in-shape to me," he said flirtily. "But you have my attention," he added as he leaned back in his seat again. "What do you have in mind?"

Buffy put on a completely innocent look and suggested, "I could beat you up. That would be helpful to training stuff."

Jack looked at her over his coffee mug as he went to take a sip. "I'm immortal, not stupid," he reminded her with a smirk before continuing in a more serious tone. "If there _is_ any equipment you need, just talk to Ianto. We have quite a few rooms in the sublevels that aren't currently in use. If you'd like to convert one for training purposes, that can be arranged."

Grinning like a kid at Christmas, she took a drink of coffee and swooned again. "That Ianto and I will definitely be spending a lot of time together," she told Jack with a teasing smile. "Amazing coffee _and_ the go-to guy for getting trainingness. The shrine will be up by the end of the week."

Jack gave her a mock warning glare and wagged his finger at her. "Watch it," he said. "That one's spoken for, so you better keep it business-like."

Jack glanced at his watch and sighed. "Speaking of which, he'll kick my ass in a very business-like manner if I'm late for this stupid meeting." He got up from his desk. "I'll show you your work station on the way past," he told her. He waved to the paperwork in front of her that she was in the middle of filling out and the coffee mug beside it. "You can take that to your new desk with you," he said.

He lead her out of his office to an empty workstation in the Hub's main area. Gwen had recently taken up Owen's old station outside Jack's office, while Ianto had retained his station where he'd squeezed it in between the coffee machine and the spiral staircase. It seemed to Jack that Ianto had carved out his own little bit of workspace and that made it more personal to him, even if it was smaller than some of the other ones that were now available. Jack parked Buffy at what had previously been Gwen's station. Ianto passed them with a large insulated carafe and some files, heading for the stairs to the sublevels.

"You can finish up your paperwork, then you can get started here," he told her, tapping a few keys on her keyboard to bring up a menu. "This is our alien database. You can get yourself acquainted with some of the interesting sorts of lifeforms you may be meeting." Jack glanced at his watch again. "While I go meet some extremely _un_interesting lifeforms." He nodded towards his second in command. "If you have any questions, you can ask Gwen."

Buffy plopped into the chair in front of the very complicated-looking station and watched Jack do his typey thing to bring up the database. Looking up at him with wide eyes, she asked with a tiny hint of playful sarcasm, "Gee, teach, homework already? I feel special."

Then, smirking up at him over her coffee mug as he had done to her in his office, she gave him a little wave with her paperwork. "Have fun with your boredom, try to resist the call of naptime, and no plotting anyone's untimely demise," she told him in her perky Buffy manner. She was just glad _she_ wasn't the one going into that meeting.

Jack only snorted in response. He generally got _through_ these meetings by plotting the accidental, painful and untimely demise of everyone else involved until his eyes glazed over to the point that Ianto glared at him and/or kicked him under the table. He trotted down the stairs and burst into the conference room, where Ianto had a cup of coffee waiting for him and the carafe standing by. Jack dropped into his seat. "Let's get this over with," he said.

Buffy watched him go while trying desperately not to laugh; she managed to succeed until the door closed, then fell right into a batch of quiet giggles that lasted a full minute. When she'd composed herself, she got to work on filling in the blanks on the personnel sheet Ianto had given her, the boredom setting in fast until she finally signed her name with her own kind of flourish and set it all aside to give to the Coffee God later.

And then it was time for the fun stuff. Going through the many files on aliens that Torchwood had encountered in the past, she found herself wishing she had popcorn, and pondering whether a certain alien species was distantly related to Fyarl demons. Because that one kinda looked like Giles...


	4. It Was a Pleasant Afternoon - Part 1

**IT ****_WAS_**** A PLEASANT AFTERNOON - Part 1**

Jack emerged back into the Hub's main work area from the stairs to the lower levels with Ianto at his heels. They would have heard him coming before they saw him. He was ranting angrily at Ianto over his shoulder. "... which is _also_ completely unprofessional, by the way. I mean, who the hell does he think he is, anyway?"

"The Prime Minister?" Ianto ventured evenly.

Jack spun around to face Ianto momentarily. "We don't report to him," Jack said testily. "Sometimes I let him know what's going on, as a courtesy, _if_ I feel like it!" He turned and resumed his agitated march towards his office. "He sure as _hell_ isn't coming here, to my base, to look down his nose at _my_ operation and to try and _steal my staff_!" he said angrily.

"Jack..." Ianto began. Jack spun around and looked at him, his expression still very agitated, his eyebrows raised as if challenging Ianto. Ianto just gazed back at him, his expression inscrutable. "Maybe you should consider it, just for the sake of playing nice," he suggested.

"I don't need to play nice with him," Jack scoffed.

Ianto just raised an eyebrow at him.

Jack held his gaze for a very long moment, a silent battle of wills seeming to take place. "Fine," Jack finally said. "I'll consider it."

Ianto cocked his head very slightly in rebuke.

Jack rolled his eyes. "Fine. Set it up. But not right away. Make him wait."

Ianto nodded and moved over to his station.

When Ianto had moved away and the debate was over, Jack seemed to realize that everyone (well, Gwen and Buffy) were looking at him. He looked over at Buffy. "How's it going with that database?" he asked casually, as though he hadn't just been having a temper tantrum right through the middle of the Hub.

Okay, so, first thing Buffy had to do when she got off work that day: buy popcorn. There were just too many moments for which she was missing prime viewing comfort. She definitely needed popcorn, or at least some Chinese food. Moments of insanity always made her think of Chinese food - she blamed Faith and Dawn for that, and too many boring Cleveland nights hiding from the Minis.

Blinking comically at Jack's casual tone, she gave him a big smile as she recovered from the shift in mood, and gesturing toward the screen in front of her, told him, "I think I know this guy's second cousin! He makes a _great_ vodka martini."

Jack gave her a smile and turned to head up to his office when Ianto called out.

"Jack," he said with a small note of urgency in his voice as he peered at something on his computer screen with a degree of consternation. "We're getting reports of something that witnesses are describing as a sort of Porcupine Man in a supermarket. Apparently this 'person' is wrecking displays, stealing food and assaulting anyone who comes near it. Three members of store security have been injured. They've called police."

Jack nodded and turned to Gwen. "Tell the police that we'll handle it." He looked at Buffy. "You wanted to kick someone in the head. How does Porcupine Guy sound?"

"Like just what the glorified therapist ordered," she answered with a grin, grabbing her coat from the back of the chair. That had been one of her titles for him during their 'incarceration' together in the hotel from hell; while they'd been stuck in the lap of luxury, trying to find a way out and the thing behind their abductions, they'd shared the talking and listening deal and he had done more for her than any therapist could ever hope to accomplish. Jack had understood things that few others had ever dreamed of comprehending, and even fewer had ever bothered to try. That was the main reason she had taken him up on his offer of a job with Torchwood - being around Jack made her feel better about the part of her life where she was just Buffy and not the Slayer first and foremost.

Ianto looked at Jack with a modicum of concern as he grabbed the captain's coat. "She doesn't have a gun yet," he pointed out. He clearly wasn't sure this was a good idea when he hadn't even finished processing her.

"She doesn't _need_ a gun," Jack announced as Ianto helped him into the coat. "She'll have one, when you get around to it," he added. "Just in case. But she doesn't _need_ one."

Ianto frowned and looked over at Gwen.

Gwen was clearly sharing Ianto's trepidation over Jack's apparent loss of what sanity he'd ever possessed. Hastily struggling into the sleeves of her own dark coat, she voiced those concerns. "Jack, are you sure about this?" she asked in the voice she used when trying to talk some sense into her boss. "She clearly hasn't had experience with these sorts of things-"

"What part of the _Vampire Slayer_ memo didn't you get?" Buffy interrupted, giving the dark haired woman a look that said she was on an entirely different planet than Joking Land right now. "This is just another day at the office for me, _and_," she turned her gaze on Ianto this time, "Jack's right, I _don't_ need a gun." Pulling up the zipper on her leather coat, she started for the door. "Now can we get on with catching Quilly already?" she called back to them impatiently.

"Right, then," Ianto muttered as he pulled his own overcoat on. Rather than following Jack, Buffy and Gwen up to the Plass, he took the passageway that lead to the underground carpark and retrieved the SUV, pulling up in front of the watertower to pick the others up.

Jack got into the passenger seat, leaving Gwen and Buffy to get into the back. The inside of the SUV was as hightech as any workstation in the Hub and Jack glanced back at Gwen. "Keep an eye on the reports, make sure it hasn't moved." He didn't want to show up at the supermarket, coat billowing and Vampire Slayer at the ready, only to find that it was down the street mauling a kebab stand.

Watching the others in action as they sped through the streets of Cardiff, Buffy had to admit they had a pretty good setup going for them. Gwen's hands flew across the computer bits strategically placed through the back of the vehicle, and though they were clearly going beyond the concept of any speed limits, no one tried to stop them. It made her think back to her days on the streets of Sunnydale, having to work around incompetent officials and police who had never been good for anything, even crowd control. Life for the Scoobies might have been much easier if they'd had this sort of autonomy and not been charged with keeping secrets that couldn't be kept forever. But things had changed now, and the New Council was rising in the ranks as a sort of freelance consultation firm, recruiting young men and women from across the world to join their organization. Of course, they were still doing the average vamp slay and demon killing, but the big picture was a part of their world as well now.

"Andy must not be on today; police have arrived and are trying to _subdue_ it," Gwen informed Jack with an irritated tone. She may have been a former PC, but she'd learned to be very annoyed when the locals tried taking Torchwood matters into their own hands. It only managed to get people hurt or dead, and she'd much rather not have either.

Jack turned in his seat to look at Gwen. He was already agitated from his conversation with the Prime Minister and he so didn't need this bullshit. "Get them on the god-damned radio and tell them to disengage before somebody gets killed," Jack told her angrily. "Tell them if they want to do something, they can make sure the store is evacuated and keep the crowds well back. Tell them we are _on our way_ and if they're still engaging the creature when we get there, their immediate future in law enforcement is going to make them dream of a promotion to traffic warden!"

Ianto glanced over at him as he turned to face front again. "ETA," Jack said irritably.

"Three minutes," Ianto answered, gunning it through a red light.

Well, Buffy was glad to see she wasn't the only one to be annoyed by local interference. While Gwen conveyed Jack's message to whoever was in charge of the Stupid Squad, she leaned forward to ask a very unhappy looking Captain Jack, "So how is this gonna work exactly? I've done the team thing before and kinda messed it up, so a little direction beforehand would be nice so I don't squish any toes." In other words, if he wanted her to do anything in particular, it was probably a good idea to tell her _now_ before she went with her own unorthodox ideas.

Jack turned in his seat again. "We'll try and pen it in," he said making a sort of waving gesture between himself, Ianto and Gwen. "You just do what you do. If you can subdue it enough that we can take it alive, that's preferable, but if you're in danger, then slay away," he told her. "I'll be your backup if there's a threat of it overpowering you at all. Ianto and Gwen will keep it from exiting if it tries to escape." He flashed her a smile. "Is that specific enough?" he asked. "I like to leave a little room for creative freedom."

Gwen glanced over at them with worry, concern, and a tiny bit of fear, but wisely didn't say anything. Having Jack around always made things a lot more interesting, but she was almost afraid he was bordering insanity this time.

Buffy just answered his smile with one of her own. "Oh yeah, nice and roomy is totally of the good," she agreed. She was about to say something about him being pretty good backup, complete with friendly innuendo, when she saw a man go flying out a window up the street in a shower of glass. "I guess we're here," she muttered with raised eyebrows.

Ianto pulled the SUV up right in the middle of the police cars already parked outside. They got out, Ianto stopping briefly to check on the officer that was on the ground. Cuts and bruises, but - luckily for the officer - he wasn't badly hurt.

They all stepped past him. Ianto drew his gun as they walked and glanced at Jack, who nodded for him to veer off to the left as they entered. Jack then nodded for Gwen to go right. Jack and Buffy were going right up the centre, heading for where he could see the creature in the mirrors at the corners of the shop. He could also see Gwen and Ianto circling around either side. The creature was feeding on frozen meat from a wall unit at the back of the store.

Buffy could hear the police grumbling from outside the store, reluctantly leaving the fight to tend to their wounded prides. There were more than a few mutterings of _Bloody Torchwood_. It sort of made her feel like she was part of the actual Scooby-Doo team. Weird sensation.

As soon as she was in the creature's sight, she called out, "Hey! You gonna pay for that?" The creature, which really did look like it was half porcupine, turned with what sounded like a stuffed up snarl and lunged at her. She waited until it was within reach, then grabbed it, using its own momentum to toss it into a nearby shelf. She watched it warily for a moment where it was half-buried under boxes of food, then turned her head to glance back at Jack. "Was it seriously that ea-AGH!" she cried out in surprise as her legs were pulled out from under her and her back hit the floor hard.

Nope, not so easy.

She suddenly missed the old days of fighting fledgies. At least she usually got some good banter out of it. She didn't think aliens would do Buffy-banter. And now she was just annoyed.

Jack was about to say something in warning as Buffy turned away from the creature, but within a second, she was already on the ground. He stepped forward to help her, but saw the newly determined set of her jaw and stopped where he was. He could see Gwen and Ianto approaching from the sides in concern and held up his hands to keep them back. Buffy still had this one.

Her hands going up above her shoulders, she flung herself up from the floor, easily landing on both feet and turning into a kick to the creature's chest that sent it sprawling against a thick glass door. "Okay, I get that you're having a bad day, but that is _not_ a good excuse for destroying property," she informed it, which only earned her another snarl.

The fight continued with a few punches and a swipe of prickly clawed hands, and Buffy realize that the creature may have had strength, but it was sloppy and lacked any sort of grace. It was just like a fledging except for the banter, she decided, and she'd just have to make do with Jack for the missing part of the equation.

And then suddenly there were sharp teeth sinking into her arm. She'd gotten too close, was too out of practice, and the smell of blood had her grabbing the thing's neck with her other hand and twisting it sharply. It fell to floor in a limp pile, its face smeared with red and she just stood there staring down at it.


	5. It Was a Pleasant Afternoon - Part 2

**IT ****_WAS_**** A PLEASANT AFTERNOON - Part 2**

Jack moved to stand beside Buffy, looking down at the creature as well. "So, training room?" he said with a smirk and a little sideways glance. "You might want to get on that," he joked. He gently took her injured arm in his hand, but he could see the wounds were already beginning to heal. "Good job," he told her. "In all seriousness."

He noticed Gwen and Ianto approaching out of his peripheral vision. He looked at Gwen. "Go keep local law enforcement out of here," he instructed before she could comment on Buffy's performance, the creature or anything else. "Ianto will tell you when you can let them back in." He turned to Ianto. "Get rid of that." Ianto nodded once and headed for the front door to move the SUV around the back and get the supplies he needed from it.

Jack looked at Buffy again and gave her hand a squeeze. "Gwen and Ianto are on now. You're done. Let's get out of here and let them work," he suggested, leading her out of the store, giving Ianto and Gwen each a nod, in turn, as he passed and heading across the street to a small coffee shop. From there, he'd be able to keep an eye on proceedings without being in the middle of them. He bought two coffees and guided Buffy to a table by the window. He sat facing it so he could see the front of the store. He noticed the SUV disappearing around the side of the store and he saw Gwen standing out front talking to a uniformed PC. He took a sip of his coffee before he looked directly at Buffy. "So?" he asked. "Thoughts?"

Buffy ignored her coffee when they sat down, instead reaching for a few napkins to clean trickles of red from her hand. The actual cut was mostly hidden by the sleeve of her coat, and she could feel that it had stopped bleeding (thank god for Slayer healing), but it definitely stung.

"Thoughts?" she repeated, stuffing the stained napkins into her pocket before picking up her own coffee. "I think this job is going to be as hard on my wardrobe as my last one." She held up her injured arm to indicate the slightly shredded leather of her sleeve.

Jack laughed. "Yeah, discuss that with Ianto. He'll feel your pain; you've seen how he dresses. Also, he has a requisition form just for wardrobe-related casualties." Jack grinned. "I don't imagine your _last_ job covered these things... probably for lack of having a Ianto around to look after them."

The coffee wasn't even on the same planet of good as Ianto's, but it didn't taste like shoe, so she'd drink it. "My last job didn't even _pay_ me for the first seven years," Buffy retorted with a good helping of sarcasm. "This one's already starting out better."

Pausing a moment, she looked at him with wide eyes and innocently asked, "And are you sure I can't have Ianto? He keeps moving up that perfect scale."

"That's the only thing I can think of that would get you _fired_," Jack informed her with a smirk.

He put his coffee cup down. "Actually, you just reminded me of the Prime Minister," he said. "You were privy to the end of our discussion about _that_. All this alien-fighting and I almost forgot about it for a minute," he said with a chuckle.

"The Prime Minister of Britain was trying to hire my administrator away from me, right in front of my face. Can you believe the _gall_?" he complained. "He dismissed the head of UNIT when the agenda was done, then said he needed to discuss something else with me and said it was hard to get ahold of me. Then he offered Ianto a job at the PMO. Something about Ianto running circles around _his_ aide when it came to getting me out of meetings and shit. I couldn't pay attention to his exact words at that point because Ianto had already politely turned him down and he was pressing the matter and I was starting to contemplate jumping through the screen to throttle him. I mean, who _does_ that? So Ianto politely and irritatingly unflappably turns him down again and the Prime Minister tells him he drives a hard bargain and offers to double his salary," Jack recounted. "_That_ is just an irresponsible use of tax payers' money," he pointed out testily. "And _then_ he told him to give it some thought. And _THEN_ he announced he was coming here to visit my base. Which, I don't think so, right? But Ianto jumped in and said we'd get back to him on that because he could tell I was about ready to fly to London to retcon the Prime Minister and ship him to an island somewhere." Jack picked up his coffee. "Which I might still do," he grumbled into his cup.

He looked at Buffy. "Don't tell him you're a Vampire Slayer," he warned. "He might need a new head of security. God knows he can't find his _own_ staff, he has to try to steal mine. He's been Prime Minister for six months, I've talked to him twice and suddenly he thinks what's mine is his. Boy is _he_ in for a surprise when he gets here." He frowned and glanced at Buffy again as his rant ended. "We don't report to him, by the way. You probably heard me mention that. That wasn't hyperbole; we really don't report to him."

Buffy listened to Jack's Rant Part 2 while drinking her not-shoe-y coffee and trying not to smile. Trying _really_ hard not to smile. But a smirk probably snuck in despite her best efforts. When he'd finally finished, she set her cup down and folded her hands on the table.

"One," she started calmly, wearing a very amused smirk, "he already knows who and what I am. Since the NC formed, we've tried keeping up relations with government big shots." Leaning in closer, she looked at the ceiling in exasperation. "I had to go to his _birthday_ function thingy three months ago, and _that_, mister bossman, was real torture."

Settling back against the chair again, she continued. "And he did offer me the job. My turn down was probably a lot less everything than Ianto's, and the guy turned an embarrassed twelve shades of red. Course, he couldn't do anything about it, because the NC doesn't report to him either," she shared with Jack, mischief in her eyes. "We had to point that out. Along with the whole us saving their butts from apocalypses at least twice a year."

Jack just looked at her for a second. "Who _is_ this asshole?" he said finally, but laughed. Torchwood's autonomy from the government was also a sort of isolation and it was nice to see they weren't the only ones having these issues. _Or_, it would seem, saving the world from apocalypses. Jack smirked. "When he comes 'round for this visit: If he tries to steal my Coffee God again, you have my permission to kick him in the head." Jack grinned. "Then we'll retcon him and ship him to an island somewhere."

Buffy laughed and gave Jack a big, bright smile. "Deal," she agreed, raising her coffee in a bit of a toasty salute, then turned to look out the window behind her. "The cleanup takes longer than the actual dealing with baddies stuff, huh?" she asked him, having a feeling that was how things generally worked around these parts.

Jack nodded. "Generally. We don't usually stick around for it, though. Normally, we'll go back to the Hub, then Ianto will return and take care of the scene on his own. This situation is too public, though. It needs to be taken care of _now_." He put his coffee down on the table. "And it's not done when all the alienesque evidence is removed from the scene. We have to go through the chatter that leaves this place - police reports, initial news reports, that kind of thing - and make sure nothing untowards gets out. That's not as hard as it used to be, actually. We still, for all intents and purposes, work in secret, but with all the large-scale alien activity that's been going on around the world lately, people tend to be less fazed by the idea of aliens and a lot of people in Cardiff have a vague idea of what we do and stay out of our way while we do it." He glanced across the street. "I say _most_, because you get the odd idiot, even in the police force. They must have been recruited _after_ the Police Station Massacre that happened about four months ago." Jack looked at Buffy. "The senior-most officers were murdered by weevils, but the weevils were just being used as weapons. It was part of a coordinated attack on the city. You probably heard about the bombings. Everything else that happened was kept fairly quiet." He glanced down at his coffee. "That's when Tosh and Owen were killed. I told you about that."

Jack made it sound like Ianto did just about all the legwork for Torchwood. Well, he probably did. The Coffee God sounded a bit like Andrew, taking care of just about everything that came up... only less geeky awkwardness and more suave business-guy. It gave her an even higher level of respect for the man - she'd never be able to do the things required for his part of the job.

"Yeah, you did," she confirmed, her voice quiet and gentle. There was a silent pause, the sounds around them even seeming to fall away, and then she said, "I told you about how we created all the mini-Slayers, but I was kinda hazy on the why part. The First wanted to wipe out the entire Slayer line, so there'd be nothing to stand in the way. Potentials and their Watchers were killed, all around the world, and the Watcher's Council was bombed. A few of the Potentials made it to Sunnydale, but we've had to entirely rebuild since then. New rules, new retirement plans..." She flashed him a grin. "Still saving the world on a weekly basis."

"That's what all this 'New Council' business is about, huh?" he commented. "I kinda th..." He stopped when Ianto's voice came over the comm system. He was ready to leave. Jack saw the SUV pulling back around the front of the store, outside the police lines. Gwen was already stepping towards it. Jack looked at Buffy. "Time to go," he said simply, standing up. He pointed towards his ear, even though he knew she couldn't see the device concealed there. "You'll get one of _these_ by the end of the day, too," he said with a wink and lead her outside. He opened the door for Buffy to get into the back, next to Gwen, before climbing into the front passenger seat himself. He gave Ianto a mischievous grin. "Do you think you can finish processing Buffy's paperwork before there's another crisis, or what?"

Ianto gave him a _look_, but there was just the slightest hint of an amused smile on his face as he returned his eyes to the road.

Gwen turned to Buffy with a concerned look as the blonde woman settled into her seat and asked, "Are you alright? We saw it bite you but-"

"I'm fine," Buffy interrupted, giving her a half-genuine smile, the melancholy of the previous conversation still clinging to the edges of her mood. "Slayer healing, it's already stopped bleeding. Two days, tops, and I'll be good as new."

Gwen didn't look convinced, as evidenced by her glance down at Buffy's mangled coat sleeve.

Ianto parked the SUV, but didn't join them in heading back to the Hub. He still had to take care of the alien corpse in the boot. Jack could hear the rustle of plastic from behind the car as they walked away from it. He didn't pay much attention to where Gwen and Buffy headed once they were back inside. They'd be on hand if something happened. Otherwise, if they needed to unwind for a couple minutes after all the commotion, he didn't begrudge them that. He headed up to his office.

Buffy had walked with Gwen into the 'lobby' of the Hub, then watched the woman who was technically her superior (and boy was that a weird thought) head over to her own funky computer terminal and start typing up what looked like some sort of report. Yuck. She did not envy her in the slightest, and really hoped she didn't have to do anything of that torture anytime soon. She'd much rather get bitten by something again. Speaking of which...

Going down into the medical area of the Hub, which she figured was where Owen used to spend much of his time (based on what Jack had told her), and grabbed a few things before plopping down on the stone steps and peeling off her jacket. Which hurt a _lot_, because dried blood had created a sort of seal between the lining of the coat and the injury. It kinda felt like she was waxing a scab, which just led to more blood on her jeans and more stuff to clean up with the sterile supplies.

"Looks painful," Ianto told Buffy, not really realizing that she might not be used to the quiet way he tended to move around the Hub. It had been a while since any of them had been truly startled by his seemingly sudden appearance. He dropped the alien corpse, in its bodybag, onto the autopsy table with a heavy thud. They didn't routinely autopsy aliens these days - not without a medic on duty - and they were well aware of how this one had died, but it still had to be catalogued for the alien database and then shipped down to the morgue for cold storage. The medical bay was still where that was done. The duty had simply now fallen to Ianto, who had always done the first half of it - retrieving the body from the scene - anyway. Ianto turned towards Buffy with his hands on his hips. "Need any help?" he offered, his burden now, literally, off his shoulders.

Buffy hadn't been paying attention; it was the first time in a long while that someone had been able to sneak up on her. She tried not to let it show, but it really rattled her. The desk job had not been her friend, and she was going to have to really work at it to get back to where she'd been before - back to the place where a fledgling wouldn't have a chance of killing her. Because all it took was one bad night...

Tossing a bloody wad of gauze on the little metal tray she'd borrowed, she glanced up at Ianto with a small, almost hesitant smile, another first in quite some time. "Help would be nice, thanks," she said in a less confident voice than what she'd spoken in earlier. "I'm not really good with the bandaging. I can reset a dislocated shoulder with the best of 'em, but always was a little messy with the rest of it."

Ianto crouched in front of where she sat on the stairs and carefully took over where she'd left off, quietly cleaning and bandaging the wound. When he'd finished, he picked up the tray of discarded gauze as he stood. "I'll get you the form to have your coat replaced," he told her as he walked across the small room and dumped the tray's contents into a bin marked with a biohazard symbol.

Buffy flexed her arm a bit, testing the bandage, then gave him a full, genuine smile. "Thanks," she said, standing and picking up the aforementioned coat. It had been a favorite. She really should have known better than to wear it to work. "Slaying was always majorly hard on the wardrobe. I washed blood out of more outfits and lost more favorite pairs of shoes to demon goo than I like to remember. Kinda nice to have something be a little familiar," she joked, hoping to get at least a hint of amusement out of the man.

Ianto wiped off the tray with a sterilizing solution and put it back where it belonged before turning to look at Buffy. "Well, I don't think you'll find that there'll be a shortage of blood _or_ goo around here," he told her as he unzipped the body bag and took a PDA-type of device out of his pocket. "The drycleaner has stopped looking shocked at the stains I routinely have to ask them to get out of Jack's coat." He started keying information about the alien into the device. "On the other hand, it sounds like slaying was the main part of Slaying. We don't combat these sorts of creatures every day. Sometimes we just have to recover artefacts or trace unusual energy patterns or..." He shrugged. "Well, we do lots of different things. Might break up the monotony of kicking things in the head from time to time."

She shrugged with one shoulder, leaning against the wall and holding her coat in front of her. "Slaying was a lot of it, but we got some weird stuff that was a bit more than kicking in the headness," she said, but not in a dismissive way. "There was always lots of research involved when a Big Bad showed up, trying to find a way to stop it from its dastardly plans. I've had to deal with a demon who made the entire town burst into song, a genuine hell god with terrible fashion sense, and Dracula himself."

She paused for a moment, then grinned. "Oh yeah! I was supposed to tell you. When Jack and I were stuck in the hotel from hell, we talked about those 51st Century Pheromones of his, and he got kinda offended when I told him one of the main reasons I found him attractive was because he had a thrall just like Dracula."

His eyes snapped up from the corpse and he just kind of looked at Buffy for a second, looking back down again as he smiled a small but genuinely charmed smile. "A thrall?" he echoed. "I suppose that's true," he said with a hint of amusement in his voice. _Like Dracula._ He'd have to remember that later. He punched something further into the PDA before looking at Buffy again. "So you have some experience with research, then?" he confirmed. "We do a lot of it." He gave a thoughtful half-shrug. "I say 'we'. It's usually me. Gwen does a bit." He put the PDA in his pocket and gestured between the body and the vault in the wall. "Want to see how this works?" he asked. "I'm going to send it down to the alien morgue. Then I have to go downstairs and assign it a vault." He pulled a trolley over and slid the alien's body onto it as he spoke.

"Ooh, neat," Buffy said, tossing her mangled coat so it landed to hang on the metal railing. "I'm always up for a fun learning experience involving dead things," she joked with a little smile. People had always assumed she was an airhead and only good for being the muscle of the team because she found the book work boring, but some things she enjoyed. Anything involving physical action really, and things that kept her away from libraries.

"As for research, yeah, I've had more than a few crash courses," she continued. "Wasn't always top of the class when it came to the stuff in demonic languages, that's my sister's schtick, but as long as we're not looking through dusty old books, I might actually be a bit helpful in that department."

Ianto opened one of the doors in the wall of the medical bay and pulled out the drawer, sliding the corpse onto it before pushing it back inside. He looked at Buffy as she finished talking. "Neat?" he questioned. "Not usually how people describe... well, _any_ of my work, really," he told her with a wry smile. He pushed a couple of buttons on a nearby computer terminal. "This is going to send it down to the morgue. I believe you've been down there already? It's this way," he said as he lead her up out of the medical bay and down the stairs to the lower levels.

They walked into the grand Victorian morgue with its rows of deceptively antique-looking lockers that actually housed extremely advanced cryogenic technology. Level upon level of identical rooms sat on top of each other in the bowels of the Hub, each dedicated to a different category of corpse. Ianto pulled a metal trolley over to the side of the room and opened a door in the wall. He pulled the drawer out and heaved the creature's corpse onto the trolley to transport it over to the vaults that lined the main wall. He took the PDA out of his pocket and checked it for the vault number he'd assigned to it. 934. He opened vault 934, pulled out the drawer and lifted its lid. He looked at Buffy. "Cryogenic chamber," he explained. He lifted the alien into the chamber, closed the lid and set the controls before sliding it into the wall and shutting the door. He punched something into the PDA. "All done," he told her. "Any questions?"

Buffy blinked at the door in the wall, taking in the process, then shook her head. "All those years of daily strolls in cemeteries must really be paying off right now," she commented, looking around at the sheer number of doors lining the wall. "_So_ would have been squicked by all the dead things in this place if it weren't for the prior experience." She gave Ianto a quick glance before her gaze returned to the the drawer where the alien _she_ had killed now rested. "I'm definitely never going in there," she muttered quietly, the humor gone from her expression.

"That's between you and Jack," Ianto replied cryptically. "He's been known to make exceptions to the rules." He pushed the trolley back against the wall so it was out of the way, then lead Buffy out of the morgue and back through the hallways of the Hub's lower levels.

"Seems you and Jack did a lot of chatting while he was gone," Ianto commented conversationally as they walked.

"Well, he was the most interesting person around at the time," Buffy replied with a little smirk. "And the thrall didn't hurt any. But really, after we figured out we both had weird stuff jobs in common, kinda made sense that we stick together," she explained with a shrug. "It took forever for the Big Bad to show so I could kick its ass, and there's only so much boring luxury I can take, so we passed the time by talking." Smiling softly, she told Ianto in a gentle voice, "His favorite subject was his team, especially you. He was really worried about you guys being on your own."

Ianto didn't say anything right away. It didn't surprise him that Jack had been worried about them on their own. They were short-handed even _with_ him there and he'd been taken so suddenly. It _did_ surprise him, a little, that Jack had talked about him more than Gwen, but he wasn't going to say that to the new girl, even if she did know more about them than he was entirely comfortable with at this stage in their acquaintance. Instead, he turned to the topic of their extratemporal prison. Jack had been short on specifics. "Boring luxury?" he asked.

Rolling her eyes at the topic of the conversation, she elaborated with a smile, "We were stuck in this huge luxury hotel, we're talking _twelve_ stars, everything provided for us, but only these creepy waiters and a concierge who didn't answer questions and disappeared when you went looking for them. Sounds like heaven until you get to the part where we couldn't _leave_ and didn't exactly sign up for the vacation package." She had to admit though, that had been one _comfortable_ bed, and oh the bathroom had been a thing of beauty.

Ianto nodded. "Jack didn't really... go into that," he said carefully. "He just said that people had been imprisoned there from all over time and space." He glanced over at her. "How did you get out, in the end?"

Crossing her arms, Buffy frowned a little as she tried to figure out how to word it. "We started noticing that there were little things wrong with the hotel," she started slowly. "People going missing, things being there that weren't supposed to be... The stuff started adding up and... we went searching, eventually found the portal out of there." She cringed apologetically. "Sorry, it was really kinda complicated and I'm not the best storyteller. That's more the Watcher than Slayer deal."

He nodded. Well, it was more than he'd known before. They reached the main part of the Hub and he went to his station, taking a couple papers out of the drawer. He handed them to Buffy. "The forms for your coat," he told her. "And I'll be by to pick up your mug in a couple minutes. It's about time for another round of coffee."

"Thanks," she said as she took the forms, holding them carefully so she didn't crinkle them. It had always bothered her when people had crinkled paper's she'd had to work with, because really, did people have no regard for the paper-pushers who kept things running? Well, she hadn't before she'd become one herself, however glorified a position it had been.

"And, uhm," she started, pausing and glancing between the papers and him, finally settling on that handsome face, "thanks for showing me how some of this place works. I appreciate it." She wouldn't have gotten the offer before. Even after all the years she'd spent growing up, trying to prove that she could be more than what everyone saw her as, it had never had much effect with the people closest to her. But now she was at Torchwood and being given a fresh start. It was a chance for her to grow, get out from under the thumb of her friends and a destiny she'd been battling with for over a decade. She was beyond grateful to Jack for the opportunity, and to Gwen and Ianto for not immediately shoving her away.

He looked at her for a moment. This was the second time in the last half hour that she'd looked less than confident... nervous, even. When she'd arrived, she'd exuded the same kind of confidence as Jack and he wondered if these little lapses in that were as rare as they were with Jack. He offered her a wry half-smile. "Any time you feel like being bored half to death, I'll be happy to walk you through whatever I'm doing at the moment," he assured her.

She grinned at his answer and nodded happily, every trace of anything but brightness gone from her expression and attitude. "Deal!" she said, then turned to head back to her own station. Looking over her shoulder, she informed him, "And I'm already planning that shrine! Every Coffee God should have one."

He stopped and turned, stepping over to her station and picking up her mug, almost as a pretense for the visit. "_That_ is an exaggeration," he told her in a controlled voice that was meant to hide the fact that this whole 'Coffee God' thing had him slightly flustered. "One that I'm certain Jack is responsible for," he added, trying to ignore the fact that he was flushing slightly. "Probably brought on by a combination of your odd imprisonment and his caffeine addiction." Ianto looked at his watch. "Speaking of which... I'd best get on that. So." He turned to go back to his own station, then turned to look back at Buffy. He held up her mug "Same again or do you have a request?"

Buffy decided that he was adorable when he was all flustered like that, and some mischievous part of her wanted to make it her mission to keep him that way. Maybe it'd become her pastime when they weren't off dealing with alien mojo... Just something to keep things interesting, of course. She doubted that Jack would mind.

"Definitely the same," she answered, grin still in place, if a bit more amused now. "Whatever magic you worked before was _amazing_, best thing I've ever tasted, and you go through a lot of coffee when hopping time zones to deal with Slayer business."

"Right. Probably," he stammered, rolling his eyes inwardly at himself. New Girl probably thought he was socially retarded already. The thing was, he knew his coffee was good. He worked hard to make it that way. He just wasn't used to the effusive praise. He wandered over to Gwen's station, answering her smile with a nod as he picked up her mug, then went into Jack's office to get his.

Jack looked up with a warm smile when he saw Ianto come into the room. "How're things going?" Jack asked. "Corpse taken care of?"

"Yep," Ianto answered, plucking Jack's mug from amongst the clutter on his desk. "Buffy gave me a hand."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "How did you coerce her into _that_?" he asked.

Ianto shrugged. "Didn't have to. She was interested." His eyes skimmed over the papers covering Jack's workspace. "You're way behind," he pointed out.

Jack waved it off. "So you're getting along?"

"With Buffy?" Ianto confirmed. Jack nodded. Ianto answered with a half-shrug. "Guess so." He studied Jack for a moment. "What did you tell her about me?" he asked, but there was no frustration or accusation in his tone this time.

Jack cocked his head a bit suspiciously. "Why? What did she say?"

"Nothing in particular."

Jack was the one to shrug this time. "Just normal conversational stuff."

"She knows about us." It was more of a statement than a question.

Jack nodded.

That was all Ianto really wanted to know. It _did_ make things easier if everyone knew. It was certainly much easier than when it had been a secret. He looked back down at Jack's desk. "Are you finished with any of those?" he asked.

Jack picked up a pile to his right and handed them wordlessly to Ianto. Ianto gave him a nod and headed out of the office and back across to his station to make the coffee.


	6. It Was a Pleasant Afternoon - Part 3

**IT _WAS_ A PLEASANT AFTERNOON - Part 3**

Buffy was keeping herself busy until the yummy coffee showed up by working on the forms Ianto had given her about her coat. She'd noticed Gwen glancing her way from the other woman's station, and finally the Slayer set down her pen and turned to fully face her. "Need something?" she called over, ever the impatient sort and just wanting to get to the point already.

Gwen felt for a moment like she'd been caught trying to sneak out of the house when she was grounded, but then she reminded herself that there was nothing wrong with being equally concerned and curious, and she wasn't going to be beaten up for asking a few questions. And when had that ever been an issue, anyway? Buffy had been nothing but sweet since she'd arrived, and Gwen being Gwen, she just wanted to make sure the younger woman was alright and really knew what she was getting into.

Standing, Gwen made her way over to her old station, where Jack had set Buffy up, and slid her hands into the back pockets of her pants. "So... those were some pretty impressive moves you had out there," she commented, looking as awkward as she felt. "How's your arm? I know I asked earlier, but..." she trailed off.

Buffy smiled up at the dark-haired woman, her kind nature reminding her of a high school Willow. "The arm's fine," she told her with full confidence. "Ianto helped me patch it up, and I was serious when I said I'll be good as new in a few days."

The Welsh woman clearly wasn't convinced about something. "And... all of this, the... healing, and the fighting...," she started, having to pause and think it through, still trying to wrap her mind around it all. "It's all because of you being a Vampire Slayer, yes?"

The blonde nodded with a knowing look. "Don't worry, not everyone can be all accepty right away," she assured Gwen. "I get it."

Gwen didn't. Which was probably the problem. Wearing a slightly dazed and rather confused and uncertain expression, she started back to her station, telling Buffy, "Right... I'll just let you get back to..." She finished with a gesture and then tried not to hurry off. That certainly hadn't gone as planned.

Ianto paused on his way to Buffy's station, watching Gwen as she stammered her way back to her own workspace. He just looked over at her for a second, then carried on. When he got to Buffy, he held out a small plastic badge in a small plastic bag. "Your security pass," he told her. "Carry it in your pocket. The Hub's sensors will recognize it when you approach and you'll be able to open the doors." Once she'd taken that from him, he handed her the gun. It was the same model as both Gwen and Ianto used. "Your gun," he said unnecessarily. "I expect you already know your way around that." He handed her an extra clip. "You need to keep extra ammunition with you as well," he told her. "Regulations." He took one more small plastic bag out of his pocket and held it out. It had a tiny electronic device inside. "This is your communicator," he told her. "It fits right inside your ear. You need to wear it at all times when you're on duty." He watched her with her hands full of the items for a moment. "Any questions?"

Buffy looked at each item as it was handed to her, though the gun was given a bit more distaste than the others, then looked up at Ianto with an almost pouting expression. "Sure I can't just get by with a pointy piece of wood?" she asked, only half joking. She still was really against the gun idea. "I mean, really, I break cell phones, and you expect me to keep _this_ in one piece?" she shook the bag with the earpiece to emphasize her point.

Ianto crossed his arms, but there was a slight hint of humour in his tone. "Yes," he said flatly. "To both questions." His expression grew into a bit of a smirk. "And you'll have a 'cell phone'," he said, using the American term to echo her own words, "by the end of tomorrow."

Sighing overdramatically, she slumped back into her chair. "You may be a Coffee God," she told him with a hint of pout still in place, "but you're clearly just as mean as him," she nodded towards Jack's office. She had to salvage the moment somehow, so perhaps a bit of flustering was in order.

"Well, he had to learn it somewhere," Ianto told her breezily before taking her empty coffee mug off her desk and sweeping it away with him.

Jack was strolling over just in time to catch the tail-end of the conversation. "Who had to learn what where?" he asked. Ianto didn't answer as he brushed by him with a small cryptic smile and Jack just shrugged and turned to Buffy. "I see you've been processed," he said happily. He looked at his watch. "And in about half an hour you can say you made it through your first day. How's it been?"

Oh yes, Buffy definitely liked Ianto. Too bad they were both taken. Maybe she'd ask for a pocket-sized version for Christmas.

Dumping her handful of stuff on the little table, she looked up at Jack with a half-smirk. "You ever see _Speed_?" she asked in answer to his question. "It was kinda like that bus ride. Thrilling, slightly confusing, and leaves you wanting a sequel that can't possibly be as good as the first movie."

Jack grinned. "Sometimes sequels are even _better_ than the original," he told her. "Give it a chance." Not that he thought she wouldn't. She'd gotten into their routine pretty quickly.

She grinned as well and waved her hand dismissively. "My life's always been too out there for a movie anyway," she admitted. "I'm thinking one of those old radio dramas, where they could write anything and not have to worry about it looking amazing on a screen." Looking around, she nodded and decided, "Yep, Torchwood, the radio show. Sounds about right to me."

Jack laughed. "You mock," he told her. "I remember those radio shows. They were the pinacle of entertainment technology, you know."

He leaned on her desk, his expression becoming more serious. "I want you to do the standard firearms qualification test on the firing range tomorrow," he explained. "I don't have any doubts that you'll pass it first try, but _some_ things should be done by the book."

All joking thrown out the window again, she nodded, looking down at her lap again instead of at him. "Fine," she agreed, knowing it was pointless to argue. If she wanted this to work, she had to remember how to follow orders and give a little instead of being the leading stone she'd become in the final days of the war with the First.

"Thank you," he said firmly. He knew how she felt about the issue. It wasn't even the first time he'd had someone in the Hub who felt the same way, but Martha had never joined the team full-time, so he let her get away with it. It wasn't just about Buffy's safety, though he certainly cared about that. It was also about her ability to protect the team. She needed to have a projectile weapon. Just in case.

He turned to address everyone. "Alright," he told them. "Good work today. See you tomorrow." He turned back to Buffy. "Are you okay to get home?" he asked. "Do you need a ride?"

She shook her head, slipping into her coat and starting to pile her new things into her pockets until she could figure out a better arrangement. "I can walk," she told Jack with a shrug. "Need to get a feel for the city, anyway. Won't be very helpful if I get lost all the time." She just hoped that it wasn't raining again. Her mood wasn't going to get any better if she had to walk back to her apartment o' boxes while being utterly soaked again.

Not that she really wanted to go it alone that night. It was a sort of self-imposed isolation, something she'd always done when things got a little too complicated, giving herself space to try figuring out things. Maybe it really wasn't the best plan in these circumstances, but she really didn't have another one just yet.

Jack could see Gwen putting on her coat in his peripheral vision. He could hear Ianto cleaning the coffee machine. "Alright," he said. "If you're sure." He smiled. "Hey, maybe one of these afternoons, if it's quiet, we'll do a little walking tour of the city." He stepped back to allow her space to leave. "Go," he told her with a chuckle and a wave towards the door. "Get settled in, but if you need anything, just call me, okay? You have my number."

Smiling in return, she gave him a little mock salute and said, "Yes, sir!" Followed by a good dose of snickering.

Grabbing the small pile of papers she'd been working on, she stuffed them in a folder and, giving the team a wave, headed for the elevator.

He watched Gwen follow Buffy out. He hadn't had a chance to talk to Gwen and couldn't really tell if the two women had gelled. He turned and looked over at Ianto, who was carefully cleaning the coffee machine with that look of intense concentration that appeared on his face when he did even the most routine of his duties. Jack smiled to himself and walked back up to his office. When Ianto finished his work, that was where he would look for him. In the meantime, maybe Jack could make a dent in the paperwork he was supposed to sign.

Gwen and Buffy rode up to the surface in silence, Buffy fiddling with things in her pocket while Gwen tapped her hand against her leg, trying to figure out something to say. She wanted to get past the awkwardness so she could get to know her new teammate.

Finally, as they stepped outside into the chill, damp air, the dark-haired woman finally asked, "So did you have a good first day?"

Smiling in what she hoped was a reassuring way, because really she wouldn't bite, Buffy shrugged a little and said, "Yeah, was pretty good. Definitely eventful. I don't think this job will be boring, and that's what I was hoping for."

They stopped to look out over the water, their hair blowing in the breeze, both of them glad the weather had decided to give them a respite from the rain. "I hadn't imagined Vampire Slaying would be a 'boring' occupation," Gwen commented, starting to ease into comfortable conversation. Finally.

"The past few years, I'd been doing more desk stuff, meetings and decision-making, than actual slaying," Buffy explained quietly. "I was ready for a change of scenery. Jack offered that to me."

"And you're glad you've taken the job, even after seeing what we do?" Gwen questioned further, summing up the young woman beside her, who at times seemed like a teenager, and at others she had a look about her... something that made her appear as ancient as Jack.

"Oh yeah," the Slayer answered with a smile. Turning to head off in the opposite direction, she gave Gwen a little wave. "I'll see you tomorrow, Gwen."

"Yes... See you tomorrow," Gwen replied, still feeling at a loss when it came to the other woman. But she had a slightly firmer grasp on the situation now, at least, and she was starting to like Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.


	7. Interlude: An Evening Not So Alone

**INTERLUDE: AN EVENING NOT SO ALONE**

Buffy tossed her keys onto the kitchen counter, setting the folder with the forms beside them. It had seemed like a long day, her first day of work at Torchwood-3, but stepping into the darkened apartment that was full of boxes and haphazardly placed furniture, the night before her seemed even longer. Her list of things to do seemed to stretch into eternity: unpack suitcases, rearrange furniture, go through all the boxes to make sure Andrew had sent the right things...

She took a glance in the cabinets and, nope, nothing there. She'd have to go grocery shopping at some point as well, get some things that were at least somewhat nutritious to make up for all the eating out she'd doubtless be doing. Funny how a few weeks of nothing but junk food could really make a person crave an apple; she'd been that way ever since Sunnydale.

And yet all the wanted to do was flop onto that couch into the living room that had been spared the box vomiting. So she did. Still wearing her coat, the gun tried to mold its imprint onto her stomach and she grumbled, pulling it out of its pocket and letting it drop to the floor beside the couch. Much better.

Twenty minutes later, she hadn't moved from that spot and very nearly asleep, the jet-lag of crossing more than a few time zones finally catching up with her, but then her phone decided to ring. Or rather, it decided to buzz in her pocket, the vibrations eliciting a surprised shout as she tried to get away from it in a half-awake state... and promptly rolled right off the couch.

Smooth, Buffy. Real smooth.

"Ow," she said as she flipped the cellphone open, a cheap thing that Dawn had found for her, with few buttons for her to press and possibly kill. Buffy could navigate her way around a computer fairly well these days, but it was the smaller electronics that found themselves being Slayer casualties.

She sat up with a grin as the other person answered with a laugh, correctly guessing that she'd been falling asleep somewhere and had her phone on vibrate. This boyfriend of hers really did know her all too well.

"Hey, that's only an every _other_ week thing, thanks very much," she protested jokingly, climbing back up onto the couch, curling up in the corner as if she could pretend he was there with her and not on an entirely different continent.

"It was first-day-ey," she answered his question with a shrug. "There was paperwork, an alien adventure in a supermarket... Yes, I kicked the alien's ass... Yeah, it kinda bit me, but I'm fine, everything is hunky-dory over here in the land of wannabe tweed."

She pouted and glared at the wall. "No... What do you-..." She sighed and muttered, "No, everything's still in boxes. And no groceries."

Suddenly there was a buzzing from the door's intercom, and a chuckling from the other end of the phone. Getting up, she went to the door and pushed the little button. "Yeah?"

A guy's voice came over the speakers. "It's Jubilee Pizza, with a delivery for... B. Summers?"

A smile spread across her face. "Thank you," she told the love of her life on the other side of the world, pouring an indescribable amount of affection into those two words. Flipping the phone closed, she found that her evening was suddenly looking much more promising.


	8. Adjusting

**ADJUSTING**

Jack was walking across the Hub, his first cup of coffee in one hand, when the cog door rolled open. He looked up sharply. Buffy was looking a little worse for wear.

Ianto was already in (alright, he hadn't, technically, left - unless you counted the fact that he'd gone out early that morning to buy milk for the coffee) and Gwen hadn't yet arrived.

Jack grinned as Buffy stepped over the threshold. "Let me guess," he said with a laugh, "jetlag?"

She hadn't gotten more than three steps inside the door when Ianto was putting a clearly much-needed coffee in her hand. He'd seen her coming on the CCTV. He gave her the drink and slipped back to his computer terminal, all without a word.

"How did it go last night?" Jack asked, stepping to the side to allow her to get to her own desk. "Did you manage to find your way home without getting lost?"

"Mmm," she groaned sleepily, feeling like someone had hit her in the head with a mallet. And she really did know how that felt, so it was an apt comparison! "Got home, wasn't killed by boxes. Managed to get three of them unpacked, ate free pizza... I declare it a win," she mumbled out, carefully plopping into her chair and setting her messenger bag on her desk.

Taking a long drink of the coffee beverage Ianto had given her, she once again nearly melted right into the floor. "I love Ianto Jones' coffee making skills!" she called out, knowing the man in question would hear her and hoping it landed him back in Flusterland.

Ianto looked over at Buffy, startled, then realized she was looking at him. His eyes flitted briefly to Jack, who looked entirely too amused for Ianto's liking and would clearly be no help at all. He turned his gaze emphatically back to his computer screen, trying very hard to pointedly ignore the both of them, for all that he could practically hear Jack snickering into his coffee. Great. Now there were _two_ of them. He wondered if his face was as flushed as it _felt_.

Jack leaned over Buffy's desk slightly. "Well done," he said. He glanced at his watch. "And within five minutes of arriving." He straightened up again. "Take twenty minutes to settle in and finish your coffee, then you're coming down to the firing range with me," he told her. He didn't wait for a reply before turning to take his daily morning tour of the vaults to check on their 'guests'. It had been neither a question nor a suggestion.

Buffy scowled at his back as he retreated, and she wondered for a moment if he could dodge flying objects as well as Xander - the carpenter-turned-Watcher had learned that skill very quickly when he'd been put in charge of dozens of teenage girls with lots of mood swings and chocolate cravings.

After a few minutes of sipping the heavenly coffee and wandering through the alien database (she found another suspiciously demony alien), she sighed and heaved herself out of her chair that was surprisingly comfortable when suffering from jet-lag. Grabbing a file folder from her bag, she walked over to Ianto's station with an innocent smile. "Oh Ianto... How ya doin'?"

Ianto turned his attention away from his screen long enough to look at her suspiciously. The smile alone made him certain she had some kind of evil ulterior motives. "Why?" he asked, drawing the syllable out warily.

Laughing at his very appropriate reaction, she waved a hand dismissively. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna terrorize you anymore right now," she said between giggles, then pulled a few pages out of the folder. "This is what you gave me for my coat," she said, handing them to him. "And I was told to talk to you about stuff for a training room, down in one of the little cubbies not being used."

"Stuff for a training room?" he said a little distractedly as he read over her form. "You can fill out paperwork," he said, clearly a little impressed. "I guess I'll let Jack keep you," he told her, sliding the papers into a folder on his desk. He turned to look at her again. "What kind of stuff?" he continued from his previous train of thought, then held up a hand before she could say. "Wait." He took another set of forms out and gave them to her. "Just fill these in."

She'd gotten excited for a moment when he'd asked her about the kind of stuff, but then she just narrowed her eyes at him and took the forms. "...'kay," she finally said, turning and continuing to give him the Buffyesque Evil Eye until she was halfway back to her desk. At that point she just couldn't take it and had to stumble back to her chair amid another fit of giggles. He really was way too much fun.

Ianto looked over at her, suppressed a smile without a great degree of success, shook his head at her, then turned back to his work. He heard Jack coming before he appeared.

"Buffy," Jack called from the doorway. "Down here," he said, waiting for her at the top of the stairs. Time for her firearms proficiency.

Sighing like a kid being carted off for the first day of school, Buffy gulped down the last of her coffee and left the mug and her new paperwork on her desk for when she returned. She sent a pout Ianto's way, hoping to get another smile out of him, then trudged over to the stairs. "Let's go," she said with a resigned tone and a broad gesture of an arm.

Ianto gave her a slightly amused raised eyebrow and watched them disappear into the sublevels of the Hub. He glanced up at the CCTV. Gwen's car was in the carpark now. She'd be arriving any moment. He started her coffee.

Jack lead Buffy down narrow corridors to Torchwood's firing range. He didn't say anything as he allowed her to enter in front of him. An array of paper weevils were scattered through the tunnel-like room and a variety of firearms were on the table. "Don't worry about those," he told her, picking up a pair of yellow-tinted glasses and handing a pair to her. "Your personal sidearm will do just fine."

She looked at the glasses with distaste before slipping them on, then pulled out her 'personal sidearm' as he called it (she called it the Gun of Personal Doom) from where she'd kept it at the small of her back. It was the only place it felt natural, since she'd spent so many years toting around a stake in the same way.

"I can do those too, if you want to be _really_ thorough," she commented, hoping she didn't sound as pouty and sarcastic as she felt. She couldn't help it - she'd do what he'd asked, she understood that part of the game and was willing to play by the rules, but that didn't mean that she was ever going to grow to be happy about it.

"How do you want me to do this, exactly?" she questioned, wanting to get it over and done with so she could get back to bothering Ianto and planning her personal Torchwood space.

He only raised an _unamused_ eyebrow at her comment about the other guns and plucked her gun from her grasp as she finished talking, setting it down on the table.

"Alright," he said calmly, but without any of the lightheartedness that usually coloured his tone. "Let's have this conversation. You don't like guns. I get that. I've worked with people who object to them before. I don't have a problem with that philosophy on principle. _However_, I have to think of the safety of the people on this team. I think you understand your role here and I believe you're aware of what lead to it." He made a vague gesture towards the ceiling. "They're _not_ fighters. They were brought here for other skills. Yes, they've been trained to defend themselves, but it's not in any way their natural inclination. Of course, you have to protect yourself, first of all. You're no good to yourself or anyone else if you're dead. Your next duty is to protect _them_. Now," he said, spreading his arms to encompass the table, "you have no gun. You come on the scene and there's a situation. It's the critical moment and it's three metres away," he said, pointing to one of the paper targets in the tunnel. "You have exactly two seconds to take care of it before someone dies. What are you going to do about it?" He crossed his arms. "Gunless," he reminded her. He looked at her for a moment. "Because you're fast, but you're not _that_ fast."

Buffy stared at him with a storm building inside her, a hurricane of calm anger that brought the Slayer to the surface and left her wanting to break something. She waited until he'd finished speaking to find her own voice, quiet and calm and clearly holding in a great deal of emotion. "What do I do about it?" she repeated, her fingers tightening around the gun in her hand. "I make sure _I'm_ the one that dies."

Grabbing the gun from the table and stepping forward, her hands were a flurry of movement and she took only half a second to aim before pulling the trigger. The bullet hit the target at dead center and she turned back to him with fury in her eyes. "It's what I do, Jack. I protect people and I _die_ for them, because it's what I was born to do. 'Death is my gift,'" she spat out, not bothering to try shielding him from the cold fury she'd turned on her closest friends whenever they had questioned her motives or her strength.

"You think I don't know why I'm here?" she all but demanded of him. "I've gone from one death wish to another, and I'm okay with that. I will do whatever I have to to protect your people, whether I like it or not. Don't you _dare_ question that about me again or we will have _serious_ problems."

He watched her carefully as she spoke. His expression didn't waver and he didn't flinch when she pulled the trigger. "Yeah, I just have one issue with that," he told her firmly. "There's no 'dying instead' clause in your contract. It's not an option, and if you think it _is_, then you weren't listening." He stepped back, turning slightly to face the array of targets instead of Buffy. He turned the conversation back to business, effectively closing the discussion. "Since this test is in the interest of accuracy, rather than humanitarianism," he announced, "just shoot all the targets in the head, then you can go back upstairs."

Turning back away from him, she did as told, squeezing the trigger in quick succession and watching each bullet slice through paper in just the right spot every time. It was easy for a Slayer to fire a gun and not miss their target, but the weapon felt strange in her hand. She and her abilities were ancient and it was new and _wrong_. But she was still a perfect shot.

She tossed the pair of glasses on the table as she went past, heading out of the room without another word.

Jack didn't follow her out of the firing range. He took his time removing the damaged targets and replacing them with fresh ones for whoever used the room next. He could have left the job for Ianto, but he felt like doing it. When the room had been tidied up and was ready for its next use, then - and only then - did he head upstairs. He passed through the main area of the Hub without speaking to or smiling at anyone, walking up into his office. Ianto glanced at Gwen, who clearly had no idea what the problem was, then looked at Buffy, who had also been uncharacteristically quiet since she'd rejoined them.

"Went that well, did it?" Ianto remarked. His voice was soft, but in the relative silence of the room, it carried.

Buffy had been sitting at her desk, staring down at the empty space in the forms Ianto had given her, when she heard Jack come up the stairs. She hadn't looked and he hadn't paused. It was only when Ianto spoke that she looked up, a sadness replacing the anger in her eyes. "Just about," she confirmed quietly, finally picking up a pen to start writing in requested items.

Ianto made Buffy and Jack each a coffee, silently setting Buffy's on her desk before heading up to Jack's office. Gwen caught his eyes on the way past. One of them had to go. His gaze told her that he had this one.

He put the mug on Jack's desk and sat down. Jack was intently signing forms. When he realized Ianto wasn't leaving, he spoke - still without looking up. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" he asked without any actual pleasure in his voice.

"Well, you're both doing your paperwork. I probably shouldn't complain," Ianto said smoothly.

Jack put his pen down and looked at Ianto, finally. "We had a small difference of opinion."

Ianto nodded sagely. "Ah. The true first test."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Oh? What's that supposed to mean?" he asked. There was no accusation in his voice. Just a tiny amount of defensiveness, if anything.

"Professional differences of opinion tend to end with you laying down the law, and well they should. You can be as good-natured as you like the rest of the time, but you still have to be the boss at the end of the day. If she can handle that without walking, then she can handle working here."

Jack considered that for a moment. "Am I too easy-going the rest of the time?"

Ianto shrugged. "I'm not complaining," he replied, standing up.

"Can you send Buffy in, please?" Jack asked, picking up his pen again. He turned his attention back to the paperwork.

Ianto caught Buffy's eyes as he left Jack's office and nodded towards its door to let her know Jack wanted to see her.

If Jack hadn't asked for her, Buffy would have gone herself before too long. Sitting at her desk like an obedient worker was just code for extensive thinking on touchy subjects. She tended to do that quickly these days - the older she got, the more precious time seemed. There had been too many chances to put things right that had been wasted because of the Summers' Stubbornness.

Pulling another folder from her bag, she took a deep breath before walking up to Jack's office, silently opening and closing the door behind her. Approaching the desk, she quickly held up a hand and hurriedly said, "Before you say anything: I'm sorry. For how things happened earlier. I just... I get very defensive when people question me like that, because it's been happening for years, but while I don't regret what I said, I shouldn't had acted like that."

"And," she continued in a quieter voice, carefully setting the folder on the desk in front of him, "this is what we talked about yesterday."

The forms about procedures following her death. The request was for either Torchwood or the New Council to dispose of her body via cremation, and for the ashes to be given to her sister, Dawn Summers, for safekeeping within the protected New Council Headquarters.

And then there was an explanation as to why. A very _detailed_ rationale that had taken her the better part of the night and almost the entire pizza to create, and then an early call to her sister for a little proofreading. It detailed the events surrounding all three of her deaths and resurrections, including things that she'd previously been pretty vague about with Jack. She wanted there to be no doubt for him when he signed that last page.

Jack nodded as he took it. He made a clear space by shifting some of Ianto's paperwork and set it down. "I'm going to put it right here, for now," he told her, "because I want to make sure I read it properly." He folded his hands on the desk in front of him. He hoped she understood that she was free to sit, if she wanted to.

"I'm not going to say you were wrong, because I understand where you're coming from," he told her, "but there was one thing that you said that bothered me and I touched on it already." He took a sip of his coffee before he continued. "I know this is a big transition for you. You're not used to this kind of work environment and you sure as _hell_ aren't used to this side of _me_. The thing I want to make sure is absolutely clear, is that there are no acceptable casualties here. I only have a good day when everyone comes back here alive. None of your lives is worth more or less than any of the others, so I don't want any more of this talk of noble self-sacrifice, okay? I don't pretend to know what was expected of you when you were the Slayer, but you're on a team now." He let a smile form. "And _that_ is, apparently, the whether you like it or not bit, because Ianto just came in here to bat for you and he doesn't _do_ that for just anyone."

A small smile formed in response to his words and she let herself glance out the glass at the man who seemed to be so diligently working on something. "It's the shrine," she admitted with a smirk, turning her attention back to Jack. "I sent him the plans this morning."

Returning to seriousness, she carefully sat in the chair in front of his desk, a signal that things had moved well out of hostile territory. "I was always told I was part of a 'team'," she told him quietly, "but it was never true. In my line of work, Slayers were always alone, despite how many people tried to help me. I was the one who had to make the tough choices and be blamed for the consequences." She looked down at her lap, her hands wringing themselves into white. "I can promise that I'll try to find another way, but I'll always make the call of someone else over me. It's just the way I am."

"I understand that," he said, "and it's part of your charm, but you don't have to make those calls anymore. That's _my_ job. I appreciate your input, same as them," he said with a nod towards the window that looked out on their teammates in the Hub, "and I don't want you to keep your opinions to yourself, but _I_ make the final call. Also, if saving the day requires throwing somebody into harm's way? It's going to be _me_. _I_ get up again. Clear?" His tone was gentle but broached no argument.

She smiled and nodded, acknowledging that she wasn't the one in the difficult position anymore, but also thinking to herself that he wouldn't always be there, as much as he tried to be. "You know, you and me, we have that whole not staying dead thing in common," she confided with a smirk. "Except I do it with a bit more style."

"Maybe, but I do it with _consistency_ and I like to think that counts for something." He grinned. "I do everything _else_ with style, so I suppose I can let you have that one."

He studied her for a moment. "And, disappointingly, the power struggle _again_ ends without the need for naked wrestling," he remarked with an exaggerated sigh. "I have to get a bit of a megalomaniac in here sometime."

Buffy stared at him with an incredulous look. "I don't think there is ever going to be a need for naked wrestling, long as I'm involved," she informed him, then chuckled quietly. "Though I definitely know my boyfriend would go for the idea, but he'd probably beat you up for the prime spot."

Jack leaned forward. "That's the spirit," he said before letting a wicked grin spread across his features. He sat back again. "Tell you what, though, we'll let you wrestle the winner."

Narrowing her eyes like a kid whose sibling had just declared intentions for something despicable that called for instant payback. She pointed a finger at him in a threatening promise and said, "I'm telling Ianto on you," then rose and headed for the door.

Jack smiled like the Cheshire Cat as he called after her, "Go ahead if you think you can tell him anything about my behaviour that would surprise him!"

Turning at the door, she stuck her tongue out at him like a four-year-old, then laughed as she headed back down to her station. When she passed Ianto, she informed him that, "He's being _impossible_ again."

"Glad to hear it," Ianto remarked mildly. Buffy was doing that giggling thing again. They'd apparently worked things out.

About half an hour passed before an alert came up on Ianto's screen. "Jack!" he called. Jack poked his head around the office doorway. "We have a report of a weevil in the Grangetown Rail Station."

Jack looked at Buffy. "You're with me," he told her. "Time to bag your first weevil." He glanced at Gwen as Ianto appeared with his coat and slid it up over his shoulders with practiced ease. "Hold the fort." He looked at Ianto. "Let us know if it moves."

Having given his instructions, he swept out the door, waiting in the lift for Buffy to catch up before heading up to the surface.

Buffy grabbed her jacket, something cheap and denim that she'd found in the first box she'd unpacked and wouldn't mind if it got ruined, and hurried after him, slipping into the jacket as they rode up to the surface. "Oh goodie, my first 'Torchwood vamp'," she said with a hint of sarcasm, using her self-assigned classification for the creatures they seemed to deal with as often as she'd had vampires running around Sunnydale.

They sped towards Grangetown Station in the SUV. They were maybe half-way there when Ianto's voice came over the comms. Today, Buffy would be able to hear it, if she remembered to wear her communicator.

"Jack, it's on the move. Reports that it's moving north along Clive Street, towards Penarth Road. A security guard at the rail station was injured, by the way. He's being taken to hospital with lacerations to his arm and shoulder."

Jack touched his ear to activate the device. "Understood," he replied. He looked at Buffy. "Keep your eyes open. They don't usually come out in the streets during the day and I don't like it when they start acting all weird. It usually means something bad is going on that I don't know about."

"I know the feeling," she commented, watching the streets that were still unfamiliar as they raced past. Buffy was suddenly very glad that she'd remembered the earpierce thingy just before she'd left her building that morning, and that she'd thought it important enough to go back for it. She would have looked pretty stupid if she'd forgotten it on her _second day_ of work.

Glancing at Jack, she confided, "Things going wonky in Sunnydale almost always meant impending apocalypse and a new Big Bad to deal with."

Jack nodded. "Well, hopefully we're dealing with one crazy weevil here and not an impending emergency of weevil-agitating proportions."

He reached up to activate his earpiece again. "Ianto, where is it?" They'd sped up Corporation Road and had reached Penarth Road, but he didn't know if the weevil had gotten that far yet. They could really motor when they wanted to.

"Turn right," Ianto instructed him. "Reports have it moving east along Penarth Road, just past the bridge. It seems to be headed towards the city centre."

Jack glanced at Buffy a little uneasily, then made the right that Ianto had indicated. They were soon on top of the weevil. It was loping along the side of the road. It actually looked terrified... well, as terrified as a weevil's face was capable of looking. Jack pulled over, parking the SUV half on the pavement. "We have to take it on foot," he explained as he opened his door. As he came around the front of the vehicle, he tossed Buffy a small aerosol can. "This spray temporarily subdues them," he told her. "Well, 'subdue' is a strong word..." he added thoughtfully as he took off at a run after the weevil. It seemed to sense that it was suddenly being chased and increased its pace.

Buffy had only ever seen the weevils that were in Torchwood's holding cells, but something about this one still struck her as different. Odd. _Wrong_. And that did not have her going 'I have a _good_ feeling about this.'

She barely had to call on any of her Slayer speed to get ahead of Jack, closing the distance between her and the weevil without breaking a sweat. She tackled it easily, the both of them crashing to the pavement as the thing snarled at her. What was with all the aliens and their snarlfests? She was seriously starting to suspect that demons and aliens were distantly related, maybe one of those ancient genetic things she hadn't paid attention to in high school.

The weevil had turned on her in an instant, trying to go for her neck with its sharp teeth, and again she found herself making that comparison with fledglings. Weevils really did equal Torchwood Vampires. A good punch left it stunned for a second, shaking its head as she tried to regain the upper hand.

"The spray!" Jack shouted as he caught up. Pedestrians were stopping to watch at this point. He ignored them. He pulled a black cloth bag out of his coat pocket, ready to cover its head as soon as Buffy had it under control.

Buffy felt like she was pepper-spraying a stupid mugger as she sprayed the poor alien creature, watching as it almost immediately stopped fighting. Good thing, too, considering their growing audience. She wondered if they could use the PCP excuse in Cardiff...

Jack quickly slid the bag over the creature's head and then heaved it up over his shoulder, striding the distance back to the SUV without acknowledging the small audience in any way. He slung the weevil into the reinforced rear of the vehicle and slammed it closed before climbing into the driver's seat. He did a u-turn in the road and sped away the moment Buffy got in.

He activated the comm. "We've got the weevil," he said.

"I know," Ianto told him. "Mobile phone camera footage is already up on YouTube. Isn't technology grand? I'll erase it after I've traced the source."

Jack looked at Buffy, rolling his eyes before he continued the conversation. "I don't suppose there's anything else suspicious going on?" he asked. "Any notable rift activity, for example?"

There was a pause, likely while Ianto checked. "Nothing in particular," Ianto told him. "Nothing out of the ordinary. Why?"

"Just wondering if weird weevil behaviour is this week's portent of doom."

"If it is, doom is keeping its head down," Ianto assured him. "So far, at least."

Buffy rolled her eyes at the mention of YouTube; the Minis spent far too much time on that website for her own personal well-being. And apparently it was just going to give poor Ianto some extra work... but she'd bet a handful of kittens that he'd do it efficiently and with his typical Ianto style.

Glancing over at Jack, she asked, "Do you guys generally run checks on odd causes of deaths, even if they don't have the whole police red flag thing going on? Just wondering. That's usually my version of This Week's Message of Doom Is..."

Jack nodded. "Yeah, we have programs running in our computer systems that monitor news reports and police reports and blogs and... well, every source of information we can get into - for things that might interest us, whether they've been flagged that way or not. It filters out results and sends them to Ianto. He keeps an eye on them in case something comes up that we need to look into," Jack explained. "Odd causes of death included."

She nodded slowly, turning to look toward the back of the SUV, slightly uncomfortable with the weevil just being back there. It made her feel like she was sitting on a fresh grave just waiting for a newly turned vamp to pop up at her.

"Maybe we should look at non-odd deaths then," she suggested, feeling so much like the new girl who had no idea how things worked and so every suggestion ended up being completely redundant. "I once had to fight a demon that preyed on sick kids, and the only sign of weird stuff was kids dying of a bad flu strain."

Jack nodded. "But wouldn't there have been more than usual? The program would flag that. We're going to have to wait for something to surface. Sometimes, you just can't take the fight to your adversary until they bother showing up."

They arrived back at the Hub, Jack, again, carrying the weevil out of the SUV and all the way down to the vaults. He showed Buffy how the door mechanisms worked, in case she needed to use them at some point.

Buffy followed obediently, watching everything Jack did and doing her best to memorize it so she wouldn't have to ask about it later. She really did want things with this job to go well, and so far she'd just ended up feeling like a kid who kept doing everything wrong. It was strange to be back in that sort of situation; it was exactly how she'd felt when she'd started college. She hadn't liked it then and she didn't like it now.

Ianto met them at the top of the stairs. "Jack, I managed to hack into our videographer's Blackberry and erase the original video, then I erased the copy on YouTube. There's a problem, however, as the BBC has somehow managed to get a copy of it and are running it as one of the headlines on the 24 hour news."

Jack sighed. "Alright, let me make a couple of calls. Anything else?"

"The Prime Minister called," Ianto began. Jack groaned. "He wanted to come here tomorrow," Ianto continued, as though the interruption had never happened. "But I told him that wasn't possible. He wants to schedule it for next week. I told him we'd get back to him."

"Tell him 'never' is good for us," Jack said.

"He wants to talk to you, Jack."

"I thought keeping him off my back was the skill that impressed him so much," Jack countered, striding towards his office before the conversation got any more unpleasant. "Show it off."

"Also, the mayor saw the video and wants to know why you assaulted and abducted one of his citizens in broad daylight."

Jack stopped and spun around. "Seriously?" he asked incredulously.

"No," Ianto replied calmly. "I just wanted to get your attention." He handed Jack the mug of coffee he'd been carrying. "BBC."

Jack was about to say something, but let himself be distracted by the coffee. "Yeah, I'll call right now," he said, stepping towards his office. "But I'm not talking to the Prime Minister. Keep him out of my hair," he called over his shoulder. "I'm serious."

Ianto gave a very put-upon nod to Jack's back as he turned to go back to his own workspace.

"How was weevil hunting?" he asked Buffy as he passed her.

"Kinda boring," she admitted, watching Gwen seem to debate something and then head off to follow Jack rather than stay and chat with the newbie. She didn't blame her. Arguing with a national television network sounded like a lot more fun. "I'm used to getting a bit more fight out of my baddies, and a lot more talking, lot less snarling. Makes me kinda wish there was a higher rate of vamp activity around here... Stupid Rift," she grumbled, hands in her pockets as she leaned against the edge of her desk.

"You know," Buffy started, a grin slowly blossoming, "if you ever want someone else to field the calls from the PM, you can count me as a volunteer. I think he'd be more than a little surprised at having to deal with me again." She had to admit, she'd made a sizable effort last time to leave an impression.

"Jack told me that he'd offered you a job, as well. Something about twelve shades of embarrassed? I thought we'd save you for when he visits. Kind of a surprise," he said, packing a lot of evil into a very small smile.

"Ooh, very nice," she said approvingly, giving him a mischievous smile. "Better make sure to have a camera on hand for when he trips over his own oversized feet. Believe me, it's something you _don't_ want to miss."

Still leaning against her desk, she sort of twiddled her thumbs in the pockets of her coat, quietly thinking and changing hesitant glances over at Ianto. Finally, she pushed away from the desk and walked over to him, uncertainty etched along the edges of her otherwise calm expression. "Is there something I should be doing?" she asked him, completely serious and almost a little nervous. "Or... something I _could_ do? Cause that paperwork from earlier is gonna take me ten minutes, twenty tops, and then I'll have to start playing with office supplies and seeing what I can balance on my nose, and that just doesn't seem like a productive use of time."

Ianto turned his attention to her when she approached, but he really hadn't been expecting her to _ask_ for more work. He couldn't remember the last time someone had finished their assigned work and asked for more at Torchwood. Usually they just invented some new and disruptive way to fuck around. He glanced over at the papers on her desk. "I suppose when that training room is done and you've run out of work, you'll be doing that," he mused. "So I suppose if there's anything you need to learn, you'll have to learn it now."

He looked at her. "How long have you actually been in Cardiff?" he asked. "Only, I heard you telling Jack that you hadn't unpacked yet. You said you didn't know your way around? You could look at some maps and read about the city... try to get a feel for it before you go out there and explore it. That would be productive, especially once you've gotten established here and get sent somewhere on your own in the course of an investigation." He put his pen down. "And just a recommendation? Your first day off, go be a tourist. By 'be a tourist', I mean go do all the most touristy things you can find. There are brochures upstairs in the tourist office. Walk along the harbour, go to the market, visit the castle. There are some nice views of the city from the top of the Keep on a clear day." He turned back to his work. "Someone recommended that to me when I moved to London to work at Canary Wharf," he told her as he glanced through some forms. "I was skeptical about it, but it helped a lot."

Nodding slowly as she took in his suggestions, she gave him a small smile. "Okay, I'll do that," she agreed, taking a few backward steps, not wanting to bother him and not feeling playful enough to pull out the flirting. "Thanks, Ianto." And then she turned and went back to her desk, sitting there for a moment and just thinking before returning to the paperwork for her training room.

The Hub seemed too quiet, even with the sounds of their prehistoric watchdog flying overhead. It was quiet and strange and she was suddenly hit with the strangest sense of homesickness... for Cleveland.

She missed her friends. She missed having Faith send her weird faces from the other side of a conference room or very inappropriate text messages, both in timing and subject. She missed hearing Xander complain about the latest teen girl fad, and Willow beaming about the magically inclined wizkids they'd found that week. She missed seeing Giles clean his glasses and try not to scream in British frustration...

But no matter how much she missed them, she knew they were part of what had been holding her back all these years. She'd spent so much of her life living up to people's expectations and being afraid of another person she loved leaving her that she'd missed the memo of living her life for _her_, just for Buffy. It was something she'd known for quite some time, but it was Jack who had finally given her the perfect opportunity. She just had to make it through and not let herself run back to the familiar at the first sign of trouble.

She could do it. She was Buffy, the Slayer who had defeated the First Evil and changed the course of history. She could do anything she put her mind to, damnit!


	9. Lunch Breaks and Tourist Traps

**LUNCH BREAKS AND TOURIST TRAPS**

"... I mean, seriously? Is it National Disrespect Torchwood Week?" Jack was saying as he and Gwen exited his office. He turned to Ianto as he came into the main area of the Hub. "The BBC seems to think that, just because Canary Wharf is gone, that Torchwood doesn't have teeth anymore. Why don't you take them off the air for a couple of hours tonight, right after the watershed? They can see how they like the taste of a few thousand 'Is this what I pay my licence fee for?' letters and irate phone calls."

Ianto nodded and noted something down.

"Not just BBC1, either. All the TV stations, all the radio stations. _Everything_. Let the nation watch reruns of American shows on Channel 5."

Jack turned to Buffy. "Still up for that walking tour I promised you yesterday? Or are you busy?" he said, nodding towards the forms she was filling in. He glanced up at the ceiling. "Apparently, the weather is lovely this afternoon."

Buffy had looked up from her paperwork as soon as she heard Jack's voice, just in time to catch Gwen's smirk and a shake of the head at their boss's rant. And... whoa, they could do that? Well, really, it did make sense. Willow could shut down the entire internet for hours at a time to stop people from getting into the NC's files, so why couldn't Torchwood use some of their amazing tech to force people to suffer through reruns?

"Nope, just finishing up," she answered with a grin, quickly signing her name at the bottom of the page before hopping up. Hurrying over to Ianto, she held them out with a grin and told him, "For you, kind Coffee God."

Jack looked over at him as he took the documents from Buffy. "Want to come with us?" he asked.

Ianto had been putting Buffy's forms into a file. His head snapped up. "I... really?"

Jack smiled. "Yeah, Gwen can handle things around here for a bit," he said, grinning over at Gwen for emphasis. He gave Buffy a nudge with his elbow, nodding towards Ianto. "He's local. He knows more."

"Technically, you've lived here longer than I have," Ianto answered, but he was putting his jacket on.

"Mostly underground," Jack pointed out.

"Fair point," Ianto conceded, heading up to Jack's office to get his coat.

Buffy nearly started dancing with excitement while they waited for Ianto. "Please tell me this city is more interesting than Rome," she said to Jack, amusement flitting across her expression. "Because once you've seen the ruins and done the shopping, there's really not much to it for an Action Girl like me."

Not that she didn't love Rome. She'd spent quite a few 'vacations' there with Andrew and the Minis, and on one occasion she'd even gotten to see 'herself' in action with some guy called the Immortal. Decoys still kinda wigged her out, but she no longer doubted their effectiveness.

Jack raised an eyebrow. "Define 'interesting'," he said. "We have monsters that could jump out of a sewer or the rift in time and space at any moment at any location. Keeps things interesting. There are also some really good restaurants if you know where to look and I know a guy who can put both feet _behind_ his head."

"What 'guy'?" Ianto asked suspiciously as he arrived with Jack's coat.

"I meant _used_ to know a guy," Jack told Buffy with a completely straight face.

Ianto helped Jack into his coat and gave him a _look_, but it was half-hearted and there was a smile in his eyes.

Before Buffy could head for the door, Jack steered her towards the centre of the room. "You haven't been this way, yet," he told her and gave her a hand up onto the platform before he and Ianto joined her. "We call it the invisible lift."

"Invisible? Neat," Buffy commented as the platform rose toward the surface, watching the gadgets and gears work beneath the ceiling. As the stone settled into place and as watched people pass by without any crazy looks or frantic screams, she smirked and gave Jack a sidelong gaze. "Lemme guess, they don't notice us? Something perceptiony?"

Not waiting for an answer, she hopped off the lift and did a little spin, her head tilting back to drink in the sun peaking through white clouds that did not promise rain. "Definitely of the wicked cool, but not so much as teleporting."

"Teleporting got me _into_ this mess," Jack retorted without offering any sort of explanation. "And yes, it's a perception filter." He started out across the Plass towards Lloyd George Avenue, heading for the city centre. "Since you've been through the Plass a few times now, I imagine you've already taken in the Millenium Centre," he said, gesturing towards the elaborate venue as they passed it.

"Kinda sorta," she said with a shrug, hands in her coat pockets as she walked along with them, her eyes taking in the place where she'd be living from now on. "It was all rainy and yuck yesterday, and after I kinda just wanted to get home, so didn't pay much attention."

Her brow furrowed and she mused, "Not that it's really homey yet. Mostly just an empty apartment with lots of boxes mocking me and waiting for me to sleep so they can fall on top of me and make me a squished Buffy." Glancing at the two men who probably thought she was looney, she quickly added in defense, "It's happened before. Really. Evil possessed boxes."

"I've heard of stranger things," Ianto said placidly. Jack smirked.

"This area was pretty much derelict when I was growing up," Ianto explained to Buffy before they moved beyond the Plass. "This is all new within the last ten years."

Buffy smiled. "I like it," she decided, the atmosphere and look of the buildings not grating on her enhanced senses in the least. Good thing, too, since she was kinda stuck there. "It's not like L.A. or Sunnydale, and definitely not like Cleveland," she added with a chuckle. No, she was most certainly not in Ohio anymore, Toto.

Ianto looked over at her. "I haven't... _been_ to America," he told her, "but I _have_ noticed that Cleveland tends to be the punchline of a lot of jokes on American television." He cocked his head slightly. "I'm going to guess from your tone that it's at least _somewhat_ warranted."

"Little bit," she agreed with another laugh and a broad smile. "Some stuff's way overdone and over-toppy, but others are very much warranted. But it's not a bad place to live, other than the active Hellmouth stuff. But really, the locals barely notice."

Ianto nodded and looked at Jack a little helplessly. He wasn't anti-social, by any means, but sometimes it got to the point where he just didn't know what to _do_ with the continuous perkiness.

"Kinda like here," Jack said with a grin as they headed up the sidewalk along the wide boulevard of Lloyd George Avenue. He smirked again. "Then again, alien stuff is getting so old-hat around here, maybe it's not that they're not _noticing_. Maybe they're just _bored_ of it now."

Buffy looked at Jack for a long moment, then glanced at Ianto before turning a completely _innocent_ gaze on her ancient yet drool-worthy boss. "Or maybe it's just that _you're_ getting boring," she said, completely serious and not letting even a tiny smile crack. She'd been looking forward to this one.

Jack looked at Ianto. Ianto raised an 'Are you going to let her talk to you like that?' eyebrow back at him. Jack looked at Buffy. "You think I'm boring?" he challenged her.

"Me?" she asked, a hand over her heart in mock shock, then waved her hand dismissively. "Never!" Leaning in close and lowering her voice a little, just for the comedic effect, she added secretively, "But you know what they say about old age... And you _are_ getting pretty aged, bossman. Just sayin'."

"He's pretty spry for an old guy," Ianto interjected.

Jack looked at him. "Don't help me," he said.

Ianto shrugged and Jack turned back to Buffy. "Must be why I insist on surrounding myself with pretty young things," he said airily. "Apparently the PM has the same idea, because he's tried to steal almost my entire supply of them." Jack frowned thoughtfully. "Maybe I should inform him that he could pack fireworks up his ass and it wouldn't make him exciting," Jack suggested.

"I don't think that would be particularly diplomatic or prudent," Ianto countered.

Jack shrugged.

Buffy snickered and commented, "_I_ think it's funny."

They walked for a few moments more before there was a lightbulb moment and she pointed at Jack in excitement. "You can tell him that and _then_ we'll retcon him and stick him on an island!" she exclaimed, bouncing a little and wondering how far she had to go to get Ianto to give her one of his _looks_.

Ianto looked at them with a mix of consternation and a small amount of alarm, then decided he _really_ didn't want to know. Deniability was always a good thing.

Jack, for his part, laughed. "This plan just gets better and better," he said happily. He looked at Ianto. "Just figuring out the most fun way to depose the Prime Minister," he explained.

"It's all well and good for you," Ianto answered dryly. "You don't have to clean it up."

Jack laughed again. "Fair point," he said, echoing Ianto's earlier sentiment.

Shaking her head, Buffy was reminded of all the times in those early days in Sunnydale when Willow had woried about the consequences and been nervous about things, but still always ready to jump into the chaos at first chance. Ianto almost reminded her of that Willow, the Willow before becoming a powerful witch with an addiction to magic, back when she'd been... different. They'd all been different back then.

"I'm sooo glad it stopped raining!" she suddenly exclaimed, changing the subject. "I'm never gonna get used to all the rain you people get here."

Jack laughed. "Don't worry," he joked. "We hardly see the light of day, sunny or not." The buildings got older and more dense as they came into the city centre. "And now, on your left and on your right," Jack said, putting on his best tour guide voice, "you see beautiful downtown Cardiff. Feel free to take pictures."

Turning to look at him with a disbelieving raised eyebrow, she asked Jack, "That's the best you've got?" Addressing Ianto, she informed him, "It's cheesy, and so not tip-worthy. I've seen better on the Travel Channel."

"Oh, well excuse _me_," Jack harrumphed. "Back in the day, when I actually had to _do_ that kind of job, I tended to get by on my looks," he informed her. "And charm. My customers disagreed with your assessment of my tip-worthiness."

She rolled her eyes and informed him, "Sorry, McCharmy, it was all about the thrall." Grinning, she added cheerfully, "But hey! Ianto seems very not taken in by thrallness, so that has to say something about your non-thrally skill set."

Ianto glanced over at them, wondering how he'd managed to get dragged back into the conversation when he'd been basically trying to ignore most of it. "What makes you think I'm not taken in by the thrall?" he asked innocently.

Jack raised an eyebrow at him. "'Thrall' sounds a _lot_ sexier when _you_ say it," he informed the administrator. He glanced at Buffy. "Sorry, it's probably the accent."

Ianto rolled his eyes.

Jack looked at Buffy again. "I have _amazing_ non-thrally skills," he assured her.

Buffy had to laugh at the comment about Ianto's accent. Oh, she knew all too well the power of an accent, especially a nice British one, though it did sometimes give her weird Giles flashbacks if she got too sleep-deprived, but it was a daily hazard she was willing to live with.

"You're not the ionly/i one," she retorted with a hint of suggestion, then hurried forward so she could turn and address the both of them. "So, where to next? Someplace interesting and hopefully not involving anything alieny, cause I'm kinda liking having the afternoon off?" she asked hopefully, feeling like a teenager trying to talk her way into an excuse for skipping school.

Ianto and Jack exchanged innocent looks that were far too innocent to be real.

"I thought this was an educational trip?" Ianto said.

"I don't think there _is_ anything non-alieny in Cardiff," Jack added.

They both looked at Buffy. Ianto shrugged. Jack was about to say something when a woman in a cream-coloured jacket and crisp navy trousers stepped out of a newsagents in front of them. Her expression became slightly taut when she saw them.

"Well, well. What brings Torchwood out into the light of day?" she asked, looking over her sunglasses at Jack. "Is it some kind of monster sighting or do we have another particularly gruesome crime scene?"

"It's our lunchbreak," Jack replied breezily. "And might I say, you're looking _lovely_ today, Kathy. You didn't have to dress up for us."

She raised a scrutinizing eyebrow at him. "It's Detective Swanson," she informed him.

He looked past her at Buffy. "This is Detective Swanson," he told her, by way of introduction.

She held his gaze, his mischievous, hers a little hard, before she started to stroll away. "Behave yourself, Captain."

"You can call me Jack," he told her.

"Not bloody likely," she answered, but her tone held a certain amount of amusement.

He laughed and resumed his easy stroll along the sidewalk. "Police," he explained to Buffy with a nod in the direction Swanson had departed in. "They don't always love us." He glanced after Swanson, though she'd already disappeared into the crowd. "She's alright, though."

Buffy had just sort of blinked her way through the entire encounter, amused by the exchange more than anything else. She could spot a cop a mile away now, see it in the way they walked, talked, and that oh so superior look in their eyes. They were almost like politicians, except there was less lie to cops and more thoughts of moral high ground.

"You know, first seven years of my job, had to work _around_ the cops," she informed the boys, as she was starting to affectionately think of them in her head. "Avoid them butting in where they were just gonna get killed, trying not to get arrested for a murder I didn't commit... Nowdays, we have to play nice in the sandbox." Smirking, she added, "They never love us, but sometimes they _like_ us. Usually when we show up during Apocalypse Season."

Jack smirked. "Unless they've decided that the current apocalypse is our fault," he pointed out. He raised an eyebrow. "So, seriously? What would you _like_ to do?" he asked. "The castle?" He looked at Ianto. "The castle is kind of a must-see, isn't it?"

Ianto shrugged. He grew up walking past it. All the same, people who came into the tourist office were always asking about it. "Apparently," he told Jack. He looked at Buffy. "The views from the top of the Keep are nice, like I said."

Jack grinned at Buffy. "Also, we get into wherever we want for free," he told her.

Ianto sighed. "We'll buy tickets," he told Jack firmly.

Jack's expression was very _nearly_ a pout. "Spoil sport," he muttered, giving Buffy a wink.

Buffy raised a scolding finger and told Jack in her best British wannabe accent, "Mustn't abuse those special privileges, Captain Harkness!" And then she promptly burst into giggles and turned a bright pink color. "Wow, he's right, that is _so_ bad."

Waving off the tiny bursts of laughter, she managed to say, "Castle with a view sounds neat. Let's go."

Ianto looked at Jack with some confusion. "Who's right?" he asked. He looked over at Buffy. "Not that I don't agree with whoever it is," he added with wryly.

She rolled her eyes and muttered a, "Gee, thanks, Ianto," before turning around to walk properly down the street. "And the who would be my boyfriend. He's always saying my accent is 'bloody rubbish', now I have to admit he's _right_." She made her disgust at the thought known.

Jack grinned and glanced at Ianto who didn't say anything, but did it pointedly, which made Jack laugh.

He turned his attention to Buffy. "So when do we get to meet this allegedly handsome and mysterious man who is, apparently, sometimes right?" he asked brightly.

Glancing over her shoulder with a grin, she nodded appreciatively at Jack's description. "Definitely handsome, with some mysteriousness when he makes an effort, and rarely right that I'll admit," she elaborated with a laugh. "And sorry, he doesn't spend much time on this continent. Usually kept busy back in North America; he's pretty high up in the NC, too."

Jack fielded another confused look from Ianto. "New Council," he explained. "And that's most of what I know about it, except they're in charge of the legions of Slayers Buffy was talking about yesterday." He gave Buffy a slightly teasing look. "They, apparently, care for socializing with the Prime Minister more than fellow apocalypse averters."

Buffy shot a glare in Jack's direction. "Oh, don't make me hurt you," she playfully threatened. "You might _enjoy_ it and then where would poor Ianto be?"

"Cleaning up after you, as usual," Ianto replied mildly.

Jack almost managed to suppress the extremely amused smile that remark provoked and raised his eyebrows at Buffy in a sort of 'See?' expression, implying that 'poor Ianto' had little to worry about in that department and her threats left him clearly unconcerned.

Ianto watched their silent teasing match for a moment as they came upon the castle. "I'm going to get tickets," he told them flatly, walking over to the little gift shop outside the castle's gate that sold the admissions, among other things.

Jack slid his hands into his pockets and looked at Buffy. "I've never actually done the tour," he revealed. "I guess you don't get the cheesy videos and tour guides when you don't come here during their actual opening hours."

She mimicked his posture and smiled. "Well, Ianto said touristy stuff was of the good, and you've lived here a while, so it's even better for you," she pronounced confidently. There was a moment's pause and then she looked at Jack innocently and asked, "We can mock the cheesy videos, right?"

"We can _definitely_ mock the cheesy videos," Jack confirmed. "And I don't need a tour of the history of Cardiff, thanks. Lived it." He glanced past Buffy to see Ianto heading back towards them. He seemed about to hand Jack and Buffy their tickets when a sudden scream ripped through the air, followed by shouting and general panic in the direction it had come from. Ianto rolled his eyes as they started towards it, shoving the tickets into his jacket pocket.

"Of course," he remarked, "the Rift never acts up _before_ you buy tickets." He looked at Jack emphatically.

"That was _not_ my fault," Jack said defensively.

"I'm with Ianto," Buffy commented as the shouting grew louder up ahead. "It's _so_ your fault."

Looking up at the sky that had previously been bright and cheery, she could have sworn it was laughing down at her now. "Seriously, an afternoon off, that's all I wanted. Do a little sightseeing, make Ianto all flustery, maybe scope out some shopping possibilities," she complained in a ramble. "Is that so much to ask?!"

Ianto's attention was taken from the ruckus ahead and turned, slightly startled, to Buffy when she mentioned his name. He looked at Jack with a mixture of accusation and pleading for help. Jack shrugged in reply.

When they got close enough to the fray, Jack spotted its cause. A reptilesque creature was blundering around in a narrow, crowded street looking, to Jack's mind, very lost. It had probably wandered through the Rift and had no idea where it was. He glanced around. Nobody was hurt - just frightened. He supposed it _would_ look like a monster to the 21st century eye. "Everyone get back!" he shouted. The crowd backed up very slightly. Jack started to approach the creature slowly when someone in the crowd decided to get proactive and hit it with a chair from one of the nearby cafes' patio furniture. It reared up and turned on the person, swiping him out of the way with one large, scaly hand. He was thrown like a ragdoll against the wall of the cafe and a renewed bout of screaming began. This time people started running.

"At least they're getting out of the way now," Jack muttered. The creature, on the other hand, was riled now. It took a swipe at anyone who came near.

Well, Buffy supposed she had to at least be grateful that she'd decided not to wear really good clothes again today. She wasn't quite ready for another fashion fatality just yet, but hopefully Scaly wasn't a biter. Claws stung more, but didn't usually take out chunks either. She could do without missing chunks, too. "My turn," she murmured before stepping forward.

Getting close to the creature was proving to be a problem though. It was quick, almost as much so as a vampire, and those arms were pretty long. Buffy found herself dodging its swipes like an old game of middle school dodgeball, just doing what she could to stay in one piece.

"A little distraction, please!" she called back to the boys, dropping down to avoid another swipe and trying for a kick to the creature's leg, which only grazed it as it moved out of range.

Jack took a step towards the creature, whistling loudly to get its attention. He was focused on the creature and Buffy and only Ianto noticed a woman stepping towards the creature, apparently to try and grab her handbag.

"Stay back!" Ianto shouted. She ignored him, continuing to creep towards it.

Jack glanced over his shoulder, but couldn't look long enough to see what was going on, having to avoid swinging claws himself. Ianto moved forward to pull the woman back, grabbing her around the waist and bodily moving her away from the creature. She struggled the entire time. As he released her well out of the creature's reach, her boyfriend seemed to appear out of nowhere, punched him in the face, grabbed her by the hand and stalked away. Knocked to the ground, he pushed himself up into a sitting position. He could still hear her saying something about her purse as they disappeared into the crowd. He turned to look over his shoulder, to see how Buffy and Jack were doing.

This game of Dodge the Reptile Man was _really_ getting out of hand. Not that Buffy was even breaking a sweat or anything, but she also wasn't getting in any good fighting, and that was the fun part. So, the next chance she had with the creature being momentarily distracted by Jack, she took it and threw herself into a flip over the top of it, landing behind it and striking out with a hard kick to it's back. The creature stumbled, then turned and threw her into the wall it had thrown the man into earlier. She hit it hard and dropped to the ground with a groan.

"Why is it always with the throwing of the Buffy into walls?" she grumbled as she pulled herself to her feet, wobbling only a tiny bit. "Least I didn't _break_ this one." There had been many instances of broken gravestones and crumbled walls left in her wake.

While the creature was throwing Buffy into the wall, Jack pulled a stungun from his coat and charged it, colliding with the creature just as it started to turn towards him again. He shocked it twice with the stungun before it fell to the ground, unconscious, and glanced around in time to see both Buffy and Ianto pushing themselves to their feet. "That's teamwork," he said with a grin. He turned to Ianto. "Call Gwen and tell her to get the SUV down here, like, five minutes ago." He paused as Ianto fished his phone out of his pocket. "What happened to your face?" he asked. Ianto spared him a small glare and dialled Gwen's number, gingerly putting his fingers to the tender bruise forming under his left eye.

Rolling her shoulders to work out the kinks that were developing from being throw into the _wall_, she was going to be grumbling about that for days, she walked over to where the creature lay unconscious. Crouching down beside it, she studied its face for a moment, tilting her head, then finally commented, "Not much of a looker, is h-"

Her words broke off as she sucked in a quick breath, her eyes closing against a sudden rush of vertigo. She leaned forward to steady herself against the ground and a strange image forced its way into her mind. It was the creature... as it was being forced out of the back of white van. The image was gone a moment later and she was left blinking in the aftermath.

Jack was about to reply, but she didn't finish her quip as she seemed to have some sort of dizzy spell. "What is it?" he asked, frowning in concern. "Are you okay?" She'd been thrown into the wall. Maybe she needed medical attention.

Taking a few deep breaths, she nodded and carefully stood. "Yeah, peachy," she told him with a tight smile. "Don't worry, I used to get thrown into stuff all the time. Ceilings were the worst."

What had happened worried her, but until she knew anything more about it, she wasn't going to bring it up. It might be important, or it might be nothing. They didn't need everyone worrying over nothing.

Jack looked at her suspiciously for a moment, then turned his attention back to Ianto.

"Gwen's on her way," he told Jack as he slipped his phone back into his pocket. Jack stepped towards him and tilted his head slightly to the side so he could see the bruising properly, his fingers lingering along Ianto's jaw.

"Are you okay?" he asked, no note of teasing in his voice now.

"It's just a black eye," Ianto told him.

Jack nodded and let his hand drop away from the younger man's face. He turned back to Buffy. "When we get back you can help me muscle Dragon Boy into the cells," he told her. "We'll give him a chance to cool off, then maybe we can find out if he's capable of telling us where he came from."

Buffy nodded, warily watching the creature on the ground, pondering the strange sense of loneliness and confusion she'd felt with the image. It echoed her own experiences and some part of her wanted to reach out and really _help_ this creature. This possibly sentient being.

Sentient being. Willow had really rubbed off on her over the years.


	10. Torchwood Smashed

**TORCHWOOD SMASHED**

Gwen arrived in the SUV a few minutes later, climbing out and automatically filling Jack in on things. "I've called Andy, let him know we've got things on this end," she told him, eying the body on the ground. "He almost sounded grateful. Maybe we're moving up in the world," she joked in her thick Welsh accent.

Ianto made a sort of scoffing sound at that as he passed, moving to open the back of the SUV for Jack.

Jack nodded at Gwen's report, then hefted the creature up onto his shoulder just long enough to get it into the car. He took the keys from Gwen and climbed into the driver's seat. Ianto let Gwen have shotgun, opening the back door for Buffy before climbing in himself.

Jack started the car, but didn't put it into gear right away. He looked at Ianto in the rearview mirror. "What _did_ happen to your face?" he asked.

"Boyfriend," Ianto replied wearily.

"That usually happens to _me_," Jack noted, humour lacing his tone.

"As well it should," Ianto retorted.

Buffy snickered from her spot in the backseat, then turned to Ianto. "I've got some stuff that'll help with that back at my apartment," she said, gesturing to the spot on his cheek that was quickly darkening into a colorful bruise. "Works just like magic. The NC kinda has its own pharmacological range of stuff now, all industrial strength for the Slayers."

Ianto looked over at her as the car started moving. "I... thought you all had super healing," he said. It wasn't an accusation, he was just curious. Perhaps he'd misunderstood what Jack had meant.

She gave a one-shouldered shrug. "We do, but it's not all Wolverine-ish and immediate," she explained, and immediately wanted to punch Xander and Andrew for the comic book reference that had slipped in. "Broken bones and bad bruises still hurt and take time, just not as much as it would for you or Gwen."

He noticed that she'd rather pointedly not included Jack in that list, but he just nodded. For all the non-Wolverine-ish-ness, she seemed pretty undamaged for having bounced off a brick wall.

Jack pulled the SUV into its usual parking spot and hopped out to retrieve the alien from the back. Ianto helped him get it up into a fireman's carry and he headed towards the vaults, giving Buffy a nod to join him. Gwen and Ianto headed back into the Hub's main work area.

Buffy followed Jack down into the Hub's lower levels, listening to gears moving and echoes resounding as they walked. The place almost reminded her of the castle in Scotland. Almost. There was something to be said about the extreme lack of teenagers in Torchwood.

"Any idea where it might have come from?" she asked, broaching the subject conversationally.

Jack shook his head, grunting slightly under its weight. "Never seen one before," he answered. He nodded towards the wall. "Hit the button to open the cell, would you?" he asked.

She tapped the button quickly and moved to help Jack get the big guy into the cell. "Oh, gah, he smells _lovely_," she grumbled when she finally got up close and personal with the alien.

Jack chuckled as they managed to muscle the alien onto the bench in the cell. "Yes, well, it's an unearthly smell, I'll give it that."

As he and Buffy stepped out of the cell, he closed the door and lead her back upstairs. Gwen and Ianto were hard at work on their computers, taking care of the coverup. Ianto looked up as Jack passed his station. "The Prime Minister called again and the BBC is set to go offline at nine o'clock," he reported before turning back to his work.

Jack looked at Buffy. "Do you have plans tonight?"

Buffy noticed Gwen smirking from behind her computer when Ianto mentioned the BBC impending doom. Well, it iwas/i going to be pretty funny. She almost wished she could watch the people at the station panicking while they scrambled to figure out what had gone wrong...

"Hmm?" she turned her attention back to Jack with raised eyebrows. "Uhm, other than slaying a few cardboard boxes? Nope. My schedule's pretty cobwebby."

"Good," he said, "because we're all going out for a drink tonight." Without turning around or waiting for the question, he added to Gwen in a put-upon tone, "Yes, you can bring Rhys." They pretended it was a hassle, but, in truth, Rhys was a good guy and Gwen needed that, and if that meant putting up with his good-natured normalness, then Jack could handle it for an evening here and there. He glanced around. "You can go home when you've finished up with what you're doing. We'll meet up outside the tourist office at eight o'clock."

Rhys? It took Buffy a moment for the lightbulb to flick on. Rhys was Gwen's husband, the normal one who'd gotten pulled into the Torchwood insanity. She remembered getting the Reader's Digest version of the wedding festivities, which she'd followed up with her own stories of the really crazy weddings she'd attended.

"Ooh, drinkage," she said with a grin. She was definitely up for doing the drinking and bonding thing; work could definitely wait until tomorrow, when they were all popping hangover pills with their coffee.

Gwen passed them as she headed over to hand Ianto some papers, giving their boss a smile and sweetly telling him, "Thank you, Jack." It made Buffy laugh.

"Yeah, yeah," Jack said, waving his hand dismissively but unable to keep the twinkle of amusement out of his eyes. "Get out of here."

Ianto took the papers and carried on with his work. There were just over three hours before they were meeting upstairs. He still had lots of time, even if he planned on going home to change.

Jack glanced at him, winked at Buffy, then slid his hands into his pockets and went up to his office.

Buffy rolled her eyes at Jack's wink before starting to gather things up at her desk. She grabbed the forms Ianto had given her for training room stuff, cramming them carefully into her messenger bag so they wouldn't get smooshed; she'd had to redo many, many forms over the years for annoyed Watcher-types and she didn't want to chance risking Ianto's wrath on the matter.

Slipping into her jacket, she spotted Gwen working on her computer, finishing up the last bit of work for the day, no doubt, and gave the woman a little wave. Passing Ianto on her way out, she grinned and told him, "See you tonight, Coffee God." Just because it was worth the wrath.

Ianto offered her a _look_ before turning pointedly back to what he was doing. This was Jack's fault, he reminded himself. Probably _entirely_ Jack's fault. What had Jack's completely convincing defense been? Oh, right. He'd missed Ianto. Ianto sighed to himself. He was so bloody easy sometimes. He glanced up at Jack's office. It was usually worth it, though, he thought, smiling ever so slightly to himself.

Buffy found herself spontaneously giggling the entire way back to her box-ridden apartment thanks to that _look_. Ianto was definitely going on her favorites list, and that was a tough spot to get these days. Jack's little team was charming, though, and reminded her so much of how the Scoobies had been for so many years, that she couldn't help but already have a soft spot for the entire group. And if what Jack had said about Gwen's husband was true, he'd probably get lumped right in there with them too.

It turned out to be a good thing that she'd left work so early - all of her good club/bar-type clothes had still been packed away, and she had to look nice that night. It'd be the first time they'd all just be hanging out, and that was when the real impressions were made, when you really got to know the people you were working with. That had become an important thing as the New Council has become really established.

Once a suitable outfit had been picked - a sandy-colored dress with tall dark brown books that matched her long brown leather coat - she showered, did her hair and makeup, and made a quick phonecall to Willow about the wigged out vision thing she'd experienced earlier. Well, she tried to anyway. Once she managed to get through, after being put on hold twice and passed to the wrong extension, she was privy to the chaos of an impending apocalypse in Brazil.

Really, how had the world ever managed with only one Slayer on duty at a time?

This was why she found herself sprinting through the streets of Cardiff to get to the tourist office, a full fifteen minutes late.

Jack was leaning on the wall of the tourist office next to Ianto, who had traded in the day's suit for black jeans and a red long-sleeved t-shirt that Jack was trying to pretend he wasn't extremely distracted by. He straighted up as Buffy approached, giving her a cheeky grin. "Get lost?" he asked. "Or is this that woman's prerogative thing we hear so much about?" He offered his arm to Buffy. "Gwen and Rhys went ahead to get us a table," he said, gesturing towards the Plass as Ianto fell into step on the other side of him. "You probably noticed how many bars, restaurants and pubs line the Plass. It's handy for us. Nice and close in case of a potential world-ending emergency."

Putting her arm through Jack's, she rolled her eyes at his comment about women. "For your information," she told him, "I was late _because_ of a potential world-ending emergency. Apparently Brazil almost got sucked into the dimension of nothing but shrimp."

And hmm, Buffy was almost as distracted by Ianto's outfit as Jack. Too bad they were both taken.

"Nothing but shrimp, huh?" Jack said with an amused smirk. "I suppose that's a bad thing if you're allergic to seafood." When they got to the bar, it took them a moment to locate Gwen and Rhys at a table near the back. It was crowded. They made their way through the clusters of patrons until they reached the table. Jack took the lone seat at the end of the table, Ianto sitting in the chair closest to him on the empty side of the table, leaving the seat on Ianto's other side for Buffy. She was sitting across from Rhys. Jack let Gwen make the introductions while Ianto stood up to go to the bar.

Ianto turned to go, then realized he didn't know what Buffy drank. He leaned over her for a moment. "What would you like to drink?" he asked.

Buffy thought about it for a moment, then decided it was time to test Ianto's skills, see if they were limited only to coffee beverages or spread across the whole wide range of liquid consumables. "You pick," she told him with a smile, before turning back to the group just in time for Gwen to finish introducing her husband.

"Nice to meet you," Rhys said with a grin, reaching out to shake her hand. She could tell immediately that she was going to like him. He had a good-natured smile, just like Xander. And he was apparently one of the 'normal' ones, too. "So, Buffy," he started when the conversation seemed to lull for a moment, "what did you before working with this lot?"

Leaning forward to set her arms on the table, she nonchalantly answered, "I was a professional vampire slayer."

Ianto raised an eyebrow at her when she told him to pick, but turned away from the table wordlessly. He got about a step before he turned back to her, pulling a sleek mobile out of his pocket.

"I didn't get a chance to give you this at the end of the day," he told her, putting it in her hand. "Your new 'cellphone'," he explained, using the American term she'd used the previous day. "Try not to bend, spindle or mutilate," he added, before heading to the bar.

Jack grinned at her. "He means that."

Buffy had looked away from Rhys' shocked and confused face when Ianto spoke and took the cellphone wordlessly. She raised an eyebrow at Jack next, then looked down at the phone like it was another baby egg project like in high school. Did Ianto _really_ expect her to keep that thing alive when she'd already killed dozens like it just on a night of normal patrol with the girls?

"I really hope you've got good pull with him," she mumbled, setting the thing on the table and glaring down at it, thoroughly ignoring how Gwen was quietly explaining the odd story of Torchwood's newest arrival.

Jack laughed. "I think he has more pull with me," he told her, raising a suggestive eyebrow. He looked over at where Ianto was standing at the bar with great interest. "Especially when he's dressed like _that_," he added with a grin. He looked at Buffy's new mobile lying innocently on the table. "Not a good history with them, I take it?"

"Like I said before," she said, crossing her arms on the table, "I used to get thrown into things a lot. Buffy going smoosh against a wall usually means things in her pockets go crunch." She still remembered the look of utter disbelief on the Scoobies' faces the first few times she'd shown them the broken bits of former phone. "They might also have been used as projectile weapons a few times, too," she said almost sheepishly, looking away in that avoidy way of hers.

"Yeah, I think you _might_ be able to get away with the 'thrown into something' excuse - especially after today - but I wouldn't use it as a projectile weapon. That is _not_ going to fly. If you're really so averse to the gun, get yourself a crossbow or something. Just spare the phone," he advised with a wink.

"No phone-into-weaponness, gotcha," Buffy said, then smirked with a good dose of her usual charm. "Lucky for everyone involved, I've got a _very nice_ collection of crossbows. My boyfriend bought me a specially made one for my last birthday, even, and I've only gotten to play with it in public a few times. This is the perfect chance." If her tone when talking about the gorgeous weapon was slightly dreamy, it wasn't anything new.

Ianto returned, setting pints of lager in front of himself and Rhys, a rum and coke in front of Gwen, a water in front of Jack and a martini glass filled with neon-green liquid and a slice of apple in front of Buffy.

"It's an apple-tini," he said simply, sitting down without any further explanation.

Buffy glanced between the martini glass and Ianto for a moment before picking it up and taking a sip of the drink. It was exactly the sort of thing she liked. She only went for the hardcore stuff when Faith was around and they were out to really enjoy their night off. "Maybe I should amend that title to Beverage God," she teased him quietly, then thought about it and shook her head. "Nah, not as catchy."

But really, her drink seemed to be the wild card of the table, the most girly of the bunch. And Jack's water did not go unnoticed, either.

Ianto glanced at her, seeming to have a difficult time deciding whether to be pleased she liked the drink or embarrassed by the effusive praise. "I asked the barmaid," he admitted. "I didn't know what to get you."

Jack laughed. "See? Even when he doesn't know something, he knows how to find out." He winked at Buffy when Ianto wasn't looking at him.

Buffy couldn't help the burst of laughter that bubbled up out of her. It was just too cute. "Don't worry, I won't hold it against you," she managed between giggles, having to reach up to wipe the tears from her eyes with a thumb. "My boyfriend never knew what to get me either, and when he _did_ figure it out, he made me get my own drink."

Rhys snorted and Gwen shot him a look that clearly said what she thought of that idea. He wisely stayed silent on the matter.

Jack grinned, his cheeky expression turning from Ianto to Buffy. "Not man enough to order an apple-tini in public, huh?" he joked.

She rolled her eyes. "He's only man enough when he's in flirt-mode and hoping to get lucky," she explained, which made Rhys grin. Gwen just rolled her eyes and muttered something about that being typical man behavior.

Jack sipped his water and rested his hand on Ianto's knee. "How's unpacking going?" he asked Buffy. He supposed they should have let her get settled into town before putting her to work, but - frankly - she had seemed just as keen to come in as he'd been.

She shrugged and began to lazily run her finger along the edge of her glass. "It'll get done eventually," she commented dismissively. She hated packing, and she hated unpacking even more. It wouldn't surprise her if she still had taped up boxes in a month, shoved into corners and covered with plastic plants, because she could never remember to water the real ones.

"I've been in my flat for two years," Ianto told her. "I haven't unpacked everything yet." He paused thoughtfully. "I don't even own that much stuff."

Jack laughed lightly. "Yeah, we only just shoved those boxes into the cupboard, like, three weeks ago."

Ianto shrugged. "I can't possibly need what's in them, can I? I should just get rid of them... but then it comes to the same problem as unpacking them. I'd have to open them and sort through them."

"Oh great, that says all kinds of things about the luck I'll have," she grumbled, taking another drink of the apple-tini. Weird name, a little too literal, but at least it wasn't something completely random like Sidecar.

Gwen set her drink on the table, her other hand resting on Rhys' arm. "I could help, if you'd like," she offered in a friendly way. "We could make an evening of it." Get to know each other better. She nearly added that they could invite Tosh, but just managed to stop herself, the words turning bitter on her tongue. The memory showed in her saddened expression and her husband put a hand over hers, giving it a light squeeze.

Jack noticed Gwen's expression and turned his smile on Buffy to draw attention away from the former constable's sudden bout of grief.

"_We_ made an evening of it," Jack said. "Of course, we only spent about three minutes shoving the boxes into the cupboard," he mused outloud.

"We don't have a lot of free evenings," Ianto pointed out. "Three minutes was already more time than I was prepared to invest in tidying away my rubbish. I seem to recall that putting the boxes somewhere was _your_ idea."

Jack shrugged. "They gave you an air of inpermanence," he said grandly. "Anyway, they took up floorspace that could be put to better use," he added, his tone full of implication.

Buffy knew grief when she saw it. She'd seen it enough in her own lifetime to be physically incapable of missing the signs. But she also knew when to keep her mouth shut.

Slapping a hand over her eyes, she shook her head. He never stopped. Never ever. The OFF button must have been permanently disabled along with the DEAD one.

Well, she could play along. No problem. Straightening up, Buffy sent a little glare Jack's way and told him, "You're just trying to make me jealous, aren't you? I'm not going to have anywhere near that kind of luck with my housework, because the boyfriend's on another continent and Gwen here's taken."

"True on all counts," Jack agreed. "Sorry about your luck," he added with a not-very-sorry-at-all grin. "Then again, you might actually get your crap unpacked. That's not a bad consolation prize."

Buffy tossed her apple slice at him for _that_ one.

Jack laughed, batting it down with his free hand, the other one still resting quite comfortably on Ianto's knee. He looked at Ianto. "Does that count as insubordination?" he asked, gesturing towards Buffy.

Ianto didn't even take time to think about it, his deadpan answer coming pretty much the moment Jack finished talking. "It _might_ if we were at work," Ianto told him. "But then, _that_ would be harrassment," he added, nodding towards Jack's hand on his knee, "so you really wouldn't be in a position to say much."

Buffy laughed again and turned to Gwen, asking, "They're _always_ like this, aren't they?"

The Welsh woman just nodded with a small smile. "All the time," she affirmed.

"You're brave for coming out with them, Rhys," Buffy told the man with an amused smile.

Rhys shrugged and took a drink of his lager. "I've got Gwen to keep me safe," he said with a bit of nonchalance, then shared a grin with his wife. Buffy had to admit, they looked adorable together.

"I don't know what you mean," Jack said with exagerrated innocence.

"I do," Ianto said mildly, taking a drink of his beer.

Buffy shared a laugh with Gwen and Rhys. It was nice to just sit and talk with people, to joke around and not have that huge amount of baggage hanging over them like with so many of her other friendships. And she was especially liking Rhys. The snide little comments he made that left Gwen grinning were giving Buffy a very high opinion of the man. Jack's few stories about him only added to that.

"So, since the tour was cut short earlier...," she started with a smile. "Any good clubs in the area?" Perhaps a bit of a random question, but it was very pertinent in the life of Buffy.

Jack looked at Ianto, the youngest member of their group, but he just shrugged. "Why are you looking at me?" he said with a bit of a frown. "You know where I spend my evenings." He looked over at Buffy apologetically. "I'm sure there _are_ good clubs, but I haven't been out clubbing in years. I can tell you which ones people _say_ are good, but I wouldn't vouch for them personally."

Sighing dramatically, Buffy set her chin in her palm and leaned on the table. "Guess I'll just have to find the good ones _myself_," she said, making it sound like it was such an inconvenience. "It's kinda a Slayer-Buffy thing," she explained. "Gotta let out some energy, and since this place is mostly vamp-free, dancing is the next best option."

Jack grinned. "Unless your boyfriend finds his way over here," he countered.

Buffy rolled her eyes and sank back against her chair. "I should have seen that coming," she muttered to herself. "_So_ should have seen it."

Rhys leaned forward a bit with genuine, not at all flirty curiosity. "You've got a boyfriend? That's one lucky bloke."

She grinned and nodded her agreement. "That's what he says," she said, doing that beaming thing her sister usually gagged over.

"Oh, and he knows the right answers," Jack joked. "Sounds like a keeper," he told her with a wink.

"We've been dating for six years, he'd _better_ have learned the right answers by now!" she exclaimed with a laugh, and Gwen's eyes went wide as she joined in.

Rhys shook his head and took a long drink of much-needed alcohol. "He'd have been more than an idiot not to," he informed Buffy with an almost dopey smile. "Take Gwen here out of the runnin', and you're definitely the prettiest girl in the bar."

Raising her glass in a salute, the blonde said, "I knew I liked you, Rhys."

Jack and Ianto exchanged a look.

"I think Rhys is in _love_," Jack said dramatically.

"_Again_," Ianto added, raising an eyebrow at Gwen.

The look of utter confusion and distress on Rhys' face had Buffy in stitches and nearly falling off her chair. Gwen just smacked her own forehead.

Well, this reaction only encouraged them.

Ianto took a nonchalant sip of his beer before looking at Jack. "Do you think he just as a fetish for women that can kill him with their bare hands?" he inquired as though he were asking about the weather.

"Well, that _is_ pretty hot," Jack conceded, matching Ianto's casual tone.

Rhys clearly didn't like where this all seemed to be going, but didn't know what to say for fear of it being the extremely _wrong_ thing and landing him on the couch that night. His mouth hung open as he made fish faces, looking back and forth between the people at the table.

"Alright now, that's enough," Gwen finally tried, pointing a finger at Jack and Ianto, knowing neither was innocent in the matter.

Buffy had to get through another few giggles before she could try to help. "Yes, while it _is_ apparently really hot when women can kick ass, maybe the torturing of Rhys should be continued later, when he's a bit more drunk," she suggested to the two troublemakers.

"It's no fun when he's drunk," Jack stated with some authority, as though he had experience in the matter.

"And he tends to get himself into trouble," Ianto added.

Jack nodded in agreement. "Liquid courage gives him the need to answer back."

"A bad idea all around," Ianto added helpfully.

Poor Buffy just watched Rhys as he seemed to just sink into his chair. She knew what he was thinking. He couldn't fight back, because Gwen would get angry. He couldn't leave, because Gwen would get angry. All he could was sit there and wait for it to stop or for Gwen to get angry at someone else.

"_Seriously_, you two," Gwen tried again, narrowing her eyes at her male teammates. "You can stop harassing my husband now."

"_You_ said you wanted us to make him feel like part of the group," Ianto pointed out.

"You really have to make up your mind," Jack told her.

"If we're all about making people feel like part of the group," Buffy interjected, "shouldn't I be getting all harassed, too? I _am_ the newbie here, after all. Isn't that some sort of initiation thingie?" It had been quite a while since she'd _been_ a newbie, so maybe she'd just missed the memo.

"We can do that at work," Ianto told her.

"You're around _all_ the time," Jack agreed.

Ianto frowned thoughtfully. "Didn't we spend half the afternoon doing that?" he asked.

"Yeah, I think we managed to squeeze it in somewhere between the Invisible Lift and you getting that bruise on your face."

"Watch it."

"Right, we were talking about Rhys anyway."

Buffy just stared at the two of them, realizing she was going to have to build up an arsenal to combat their dastardly duo. She was about to just shrug and leave poor Rhys to fend for himself when an idea popped into her cute little blonde head.

Picking up her drink, she downed the half a glass that had been sitting there and then gave the delicate glass a demonstrative shake to show that it was clearly empty. "Hey, Rhys, would you mind getting me another?" she asked innocently, and nearly died when the man shot out of his seat and headed for the bar.

Jack looked down the table at her. "That's _one_ way to get a guy to buy you a drink," he commented with a smirk.

"He's not that hard done by," Ianto told her. "Anyway, I thought you liked winding people up," he added with a pointed look. Her stated propensity for trying to get _him_ flustered was all the precedent he needed. He didn't see why Rhys should get a free pass.

"_You_ can fight back," Buffy pointed out, knowing exactly what he was talking about. "Rhys has to make sure he didn't piss off Gwen, or he'll end up in the married man doghouse."

"Oi," Gwen protested, then apparently couldn't think of anything to follow it up with, so just took a long drink of her rum and coke instead. It _was_ kinda true.

Jack laughed as Gwen's protest died a quick death. "Can't argue with that," Jack admitted. He looked at Gwen. "Though Rhys must be fitting in just fine with the group, if Buffy's protecting him," he pointed out.

The girl in question rolled her eyes and picked up a napkin from the table, folding it into some weird origami-esque shape since she didn't have a drink to play with. "He's _sweet_," she informed Jack with a very distinct _look_. "Reminds me of my friend Xander. First friend I made after I did the whole moving to a Hellmouth thing back in high school." Good memories.

Jack nodded. "He _is_ sweet," he agreed. He looked at Ianto. "Don't you think he's sweet?"

"Very sweet," Ianto confirmed.

"He doesn't actually remind me of anyone," Jack continued. "But I guess we'll be going easy on him if he's making you nostalgic," he added with a smirk.

The women at the table shared an exasperated look, followed by Buffy shaking her head and tossing aside the now wadded up napkin. It bounced along for a moment before skittering off the edge of the table.

"I don't know why I bother," she told Gwen, then turned narrowed eyes on Jack and Ianto. "You two are incorrigible. Especially you, Mr. Swishy Coat."

Jack raised an indignant eyebrow. "My coat doesn't _swish_," he pointed out. "It billows."

Ianto turned his gaze to Buffy as well. "You pretty much deserve any abuse you get from me, at this point, Miss Dishes It Out All Day."

Buffy laughed in an amused, absolutely not at all innocent way. "I do, don't I?" she agreed with a grin.

She spotted Gwen's gaze move to over her shoulder and turned to see Rhys carefully approaching the table with another apple-tini in hand. "'s it safe to come back, or should I put in for a retreat?" he asked with a glance between Buffy and his wife.

Gwen chuckled quietly and gestured for him to sit down. "I think you're safe now, they've moved on to other things." Rhys was visibly relieved and handed the drink to a smiling vampire slayer.

**III**

They passed the evening with a couple more drinks and a lot more questions for Buffy once things loosened up, many of which Jack already knew the answers to. Like he'd told Ianto: they'd chatted in that extratemporal prison.

It was shortly after midnight when Jack looked at his watch.

"Alright, best finish up this round and call it a night," he suggested. "You're still due in at nine in the morning," he reminded them.

Buffy downed the rest of her drink as Rhys began to again sort of lean into Gwen. After the little opening routine, he'd idefinitely/i loosened up and shown the rest of them just how much he could drink... and where his limit was. The dopey look on his face really was a lot like Xander's.

"You're such a slave-driver, Harkness," she informed him with a scrunched-up-nose face before leaning back in her chair to stretch. "But, works for me. I've got a phone date to get to; he should be waking up about now for the night shift."

Jack laughed and addressed the rest of them. "You heard her, people. Drink up and get out. Buffy's got phone sex to get to!" he exclaimed.

Ianto rolled his eyes as he got up and grabbed Jack's coat. He slid it up over Jack's shoulders as the captain slipped his arms into the sleeves, then went over to the bar to pay their tab.

Buffy joined Ianto in a round of rolling eyes, then smirked at the way Rhys had seemingly perked up at the mention of sex. Such a guy.

While Gwen kept her husband from being plastered to the table, Buffy pulled on her own coat. "I'm almost dreading the day when you two actually meet," she told Jack as she checked to make sure the new cell phone was still safe in the pocket where she'd hid it after it was nearly coated in apple-tini. "He's going to get _so many_ ideas."

"He will after I give him some ideas!" Jack replied cheerfully.

He glanced over his shoulder, but Ianto was stuck behind a drunk who was trying to pay with his card and seemed to be having trouble entering his PIN. Ianto caught Jack's eyes and shrugged. Jack turned his attention back to Buffy. "So," he continued. "Speaking of the day we two actually meet... when do you think _that_ will be?" he asked casually.

Buffy glanced over to see that somehow Gwen had ended up in Rhys' lap and the two were giggling at each other. Ah, newlyweds. They never stopped being sickeningly sweet.

"Not for a very long time, if I have anything to say about it," she replied, putting her hands on her hips. "But since I probably _don't_... who knows. He likes to pop up unannounced sometimes. Having a job that pays to travel makes it kinda easy for him, and he loves it." Maybe a little too much, now that she thought about it.

Jack followed Buffy's gaze over to Gwen and Rhys, who were quite thoroughly wrapped up in each other now, in more than one sense of the word. "You two can go," Jack told them in a sing-song voice. "Ianto doesn't need your help paying the bill."

Buffy giggled as Gwen dragged Rhys up out of the chair and grabbed their coats.

"Right then, see you lot tomorrow!" Gwen called as they headed toward the front of the bar, managing to weave between people with relatively few casualties along the way.

Gwen and Rhys had departed and Ianto hadn't returned. Jack looked at Buffy, his expression serious again. "Do you want a lift home?" he asked. There was no teasing in his voice. It wasn't that he didn't think she could look after herself, but she _was_ new to the city and the Hub wasn't far away.

Leaning her hip against the table, she glanced at Ianto and then back to Jack with a raised eyebrow. "Are you two gonna be able to behave yourselves that long?" she questioned him with a smirk. She knew the offer was serious, and was actually considering it, not looking forward to potentially getting lost in the middle of the night and ending up in even more desperate need of caffeine come morning.

Jack looked over at Ianto. "While he's wearing _that_?" he commented. He smirked. "Maybe," he said wickedly. He looked back at Buffy. "Honestly, we can give you a lift. It's no trouble."

Smiling softly, she nodded and looked up at him with that friendly, trusting gaze he'd earned during those weeks together. "A 'lift' would be great," she agreed, using the British terminology.

Returning her attention to Ianto, Buffy smirked. "He _does_ look really good in that, doesn't he?" she said, stating the oh so obvious.

Jack grinned wolfishly. "I think I'm going to peel it off with my teeth," he said by way of agreement.

She laughed loudly and shook her head. "He really is going to get so many ideas," she said to herself, not entirely sure it was a bad thing.

Ianto returned to find them both laughing and eyed them suspiciously. "Do I want to know?" he asked warily.

"We're driving Buffy home," Jack told him.

Ianto nodded, still looking at them with suspicion. He was clearly still missing the punchline, but he didn't ask.

They headed for the door and Jack slipped his hand into Ianto's, intertwining their fingers. "Do you know how to get to Buffy's flat?" he asked. Ianto just gave him a _look_ that asked if there was someplace in Cardiff Jack thought Ianto _didn't_ know how to get to.

It was only once they'd gotten to the Hub and climbed into the SUV that Buffy felt at all motivated to potentially warn Ianto of his impending doom. "I hope you've got more of that neat paperwork," she said from her spot lounging in the back, "because I don't think Jack intends for your outfit to make it back to your closet without some strategically placed collateral damage."

Ianto glanced in the rearview mirror with a small degree of mortified shock, which he attempted to hide by turning his attention intently to the steering wheel while he started the car's engine. It wasn't Jack's potential intentions that had garnered the reaction - he was well aware of the kinds of things Jack got up to and, in fact, encouraged them - but the fact that he seemed to have discussed them with Buffy. Could he not leave them alone for five minutes? He looked over at Jack uncertainly. Jack smiled back and reached over to give his knee a reassuring squeeze.

Buffy giggled quietly and settled in for the ride, watching the city's lights streak past the window, getting to once again appreciate the beauty night could possess. So many years as the Slayer had dulled her appreciation for the little things; perhaps this new gig would help to set things right again.

When they finally came to a stop outside her building, she was more than a little sleepy, and more than a little eager to get away from the two of them, now that Jack had that look in his eye. They were definitely going to have a late night. She envied them.

Opening the door, she gave the obnoxiously adorable couple a smile and a little wave before climbing out. "See you two in the morning," she said. "Bright and _early_," she stressed sarcastically in Jack's general direction.

"I don't even need to sleep!" he called back before rolling up his window. He always told people that, but it wasn't, strictly, true. He did need to sleep, it was just that sleep deprivation wouldn't harm him as much as other people and certainly wouldn't kill him. He could go _longer_ without sleep and without noticing the effects of a lack of it. He liked sleeping though. Well, he liked it _now_. It had been less alluring when he was alone.

Ianto drove them back to the Hub and parked the SUV in its usual spot for the night. He knew exactly how many clean suits he had in Jack's closet at any given time. There were three in there now, but he wasn't giving much thought to what to wear the next day.

Jack took his hand again as they walked into the Hub.

Buffy watched the SUV disappear around a corner before turning to head up to her apartment. She took the stairs, like always, not minding the few flights if it lessened her chances of getting stuck in an elevator. She didn't trust the world enough anymore to provide that sort of temptation and not expect _something_ to act on it.

Walking into the darkened apartment, she nearly fell over a pile of boxes before she could fumble her way into the kitchen. Her things were piled onto the counter, where they would be at least relatively safe, and then she made a beeline for her phone. A few actually memorized numbers later, she collapsed onto her bed and curled up with the phone pressed to her ear.

"Hey you, am I late?"


	11. Introducing Captain Hart

**INTRODUCING CAPTAIN HART**

Ianto set Buffy's coffee on her desk as she entered the Hub, as he often did in the morning, provided he wasn't busy with something more urgent. That morning, exactly one month after Buffy arrived at Torchwood, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. In fact, between them, Jack and Ianto had arranged it that way.

There was a file on Buffy's desk with a report from the day before that she had to fill out the remaining portion of. On top of the file was a note, informing her that Jack wished to speak to her when she had the chance. It told her to see Ianto, since Jack was working in a different area of the Hub that morning. By the time Buffy reached her desk, Ianto was already at his own station studiously working. He barely looked up when she came in.

"Morning," he said distractedly as he shuffled through some papers.

"Morning," Buffy echoed just as distractedly as she slowly made her way into what she'd dubbed the Lobby. Her concentration was not on the innocently preoccupied Welshman off to the side, but on the contents of the bag she was currently rifling through. She was _trying_ to find the cell phone that kept buzzing at her, clinking against keys and a stake and the various other things living in her newly purchased, very gorgeous purse.

Why was the phone buzzing at her? Because one Dawn Summers, who had stayed with Buffy over the most recent weekend, had decided it would be fun to make sure her sister got to work on time. And woke up on time. And had her midnight snack of time. A multitude of alarms had been set for a multitude of reasons and if Buffy never heard the word 'multitude' again, it would be too soon.

With a cry of victory, she finally wrestled the thing out of the bag and pressed the button that would stop the damn buzzing. She dropped into the chair at her station and glared down at the thing, wondering if Ianto would fix it if he heard how she planned on murdering the thing the next time it buzzed at her.

Glancing over at him, she sighed and guessed he'd probably give her a flat no. So she swiveled her chair around toward the delicious smell of awaiting coffee... and raised an eyebrow at the note on the desk.

"Ooookay...," she muttered to herself, looking over at Ianto again, then shook her head and took a long drink of the yummy chocolately coffee. It was the perk-up she needed to get the stupid paperwork done. It didn't even take her a full hour! She considered it an esteemed accomplishment.

Hauling herself out of her chair, she wandered over to Ianto with note in hand and leaned on the wall beside his station. "Alright, Almighty Caffeinated One," she started, giving the piece of paper a little wave, "I'm ready to find out what the sitch is."

Ianto didn't look up from what he was doing yet. "What the what is?" he asked absently. Something occurred to him and he _did_ look at Buffy before she could answer the previous question. "What was going on with your mobile this morning?" he asked. "And why were you looking at it the way you were looking at that Frissonite that stained your new shoes last week?" he added. "You know it's inanimate and, thus, probably immune to the Buffy Glare of Doom, right?"

She rolled her eyes at his comparison, because really, she was sure the gooey guy had gotten a much meaner look with a lot more threat to it, and decided to completely ignore the latter part of the questioning. If she tried answering it, _he_ might get the Glare of Doom and then no one would be happy.

"The evil that is my little sister decided to alarmify my phone," she explained with a unhappy pout. "She knows I can't figure out how to turn them all off, and last night she even _called_ five minutes after one of them just to laugh at me. I even threatened to show her boyfriend the photos of her with four foot long neon green nose hair and all she did was hang up on me."

Ianto raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "Why would she... 'alarmify' your phone?" he asked, clearly finding the word 'alarmify' just a little bit painful.

"Because she's evil?" Buffy said, as if that should be answer enough. "And she's also found it hard to grasp the concept that I actually do manage to get to work on time. Mostly."

Ianto nodded imperturbably. "_Why_ can't you figure out how to unalarmify it?" he asked mildly. He knew she wasn't great with the technical stuff, but sometimes he liked to make her say it.

She narrowed her eyes at him in that way that left both Xander and Rhys running for the hills. "Because Buffy and technology are unmeshy things," she explained for the fiftieth time, knowing by now that he just did it to get at her. "And _you_ are so not getting a Christmas present this year."

Ianto smiled ever so slightly. "I find there's a great deal more pleasure to be had in the non-material things in life," he told her airily. It wasn't his fault - she started this game. He was just good at following through and finishing things. It was his specialty. People around there should know better, really.

He took the note from her hand and read it over. "Ah," he said in comprehension as he handed it back to her. "This way." He lead her towards the stairs to the sublevels.

She continued to watch him with narrowed eyes for a moment before stuffing the note in the pocket of her pinstriped slacks and following him. Her boots clanked on the metal grating and then made solid clops on the stone floors as she began to realize that she had absolutely no idea where they were going. The sublevels reminded her a bit too much of Sunnydale's sewers for her to go wandering about in them just for kicks, so she'd never ventured away from the places that were actually used with a decent amount of frequency. Now she almost wished that she had; she really hated surprises. They tended to end badly.

Ianto had told Jack they were on their way down with a brief text message as Buffy was heading over to his station. When they got to sublevel three, Ianto lead her down a narrow corridor to a room where Jack was waiting outside the battered metal door, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed.

"Buffy," he said with a nod in greeting.

Buffy stopped in front of Jack, eying the way he was just... standing there. Oh, this was not good. This was so not of the good. "Okay, boys, what's going on?" she finally questioned, hands on her hips as she looked back and forth between the two men. They _were_ the troublemakers on the team. "Is this Play Pranks on Buffy Day? Because, really, I thought that was last week when our cute guard dog decided she was going to leave chocolate bits all over my station." There were _post_-chocolate bits too, but she doubted they needed that reminder.

"At least if she's eating chocolate, she's not eating the staff," Ianto pointed out. "Or sheep. Sheep bits all over your station is a lot more difficult to clean up."

Jack smirked at Ianto's answer, then resumed a more sober expression. "Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something much more serious," he told her. He looked at Ianto. "Thank you, Ianto."

Ianto nodded and left them alone.

Buffy's jaw dropped when Ianto just turned and left, but her look of disbelief was quickly replaced by a frustrated pout. "Okay, what did I do _this_ time?" she finally asked, throwing her hands up in the air as she began to nervously pace. She wasn't good with the whole team thing, she knew it, and being an employee instead of the boss... Well, there had been bumpy spots along the way over the past month, and she just knew this had to be about another one. "Whatever it was, I didn't _mean_ to, honestly. Was probably just trying to be helpful! You know me, Helpful Buffy!"

Jack nodded impassively. "Buffy," he said when he judged that she was done rambling. "I just want you to take a look at something for me, okay?" He pushed the door behind him open and gestured for her to enter.

She looked at him with suspicious, part of her jumping for joy that she hadn't majorly screwed up again, and the other part extremely doubtful that this was anything good. There was probably going to be a weevil in a pink tutu on the other side of the door, with her luck.

Finally, she rolled her eyes and stepped forward with a sigh, and was about to give a retort on how pink was so not her color when she actually saw what was inside the room. Her jaw hit the floor again as she continued in until she was at the center and could properly turn around and see everything.

"But... But he said stuff was backordered, and..." She couldn't even begin to form a coherent sentence as she took in the items carefully placed around the room. An industrial-strength punching bag, a wooden dummy for knife-throwing practice, swords hung along the wall... It was nothing like the back of the Magic Box had been, or the big training rooms at the New Council, but still it was perfect. "Ianto is such a _LIAR_!" she exclaimed with a grin, charging over to Jack to throw her arms around him for a giant hug.

"It was his idea," Jack said, returning her hug. "Gwen thought we should have a dinner or something to celebrate your one-month anniversary. Ianto thought you'd appreciate this more," he explained with a sweeping gesture as he released her.

"Yay Ianto!" she said, voicing her approval of the idea as she nearly bounced with the glee that could only be brought on by weapons and weapony things. It was a Happy Buffy glow that brightened up the entire room. "Seriously, this is _amazing_, and absolutely perfect."

"Well, I'm going to let you play for a bit," Jack told her. "I do have actual work I'm supposed to be doing," he joked. He looked at his watch. "I want to have a meeting in the conference room at eleven o'clock, okay?"

Actual work? Meetings? Jack was so lucky that she liked him. There were very few people who had the power to pull her away from something as shiny as a new training room in need of breaking in.

"Eleven, right, gotcha," she replied distractedly, unzipping her boots so she could walk barefoot across the only slightly cushy mat that covered the floor. The throwing knives were absolutely gorgeous, with a lovely polished shine to the blade... "Really, I'll be there," Buffy assured Jack with a grin, then gave one of the knives a practice throw. It landed right above the dummy's 'heart', which of course earned a Slayer happy dance.

Jack laughed. "You know, I'm going to have to ask Ianto if the throwing knives were _strictly_ necessary. I'm not sure how I feel about those," he joked.

She rolled her eyes at him, tossing another knife so it flipped in the air before catching it again with ease. "Oh come on," she told the dear Captain. "I'm _much_ safer with knives than I am with that cell phone."

"Hey," he reminded her, "you've gone a whole month without destroying that thing. New job, new city... maybe it's the start of a new relationship with pocket-sized technology," he suggested.

Snorting, Buffy tossed another knife at the dummy, this time hitting right where it would make a man the most uncomfortable. "Right," she said with a healthy dose of sarcasm. "You should ask Ianto about the latest developments in that saga."

Jack raised an eyebrow at her, leaning on the doorframe. "Well, he was a little too calm when he was down here for you to have _broken_ it," Jack pondered outloud. He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. "Okay, I'll bite. What happened to it?"

She shook her head and waved him off. "Just ask Ianto," she directed dismissively. "I wouldn't want to deprive him of another chance at mocking me. That would just be cruel."

Jack smirked. "If you like," he said cheerfully. "See you at eleven."

He left the training room and went up to the 'Lobby'. If he wasn't careful, Buffy was going to have them all calling it that.

Ianto was at his station, doing something on his computer. It was hard to tell if it was important just from watching Ianto work. He wore the same expression of intense concentration in any endeavour he undertook. He could be writing an important report, doing research or playing minesweeper, for all Jack knew. He walked over to the archivist to find out what was up with Buffy's phone before their meeting in an hour's time.

**III**

Buffy spent that entire hour working up a sweat in her new training room, thoroughly enjoying herself. Well, working up a sweat was just a phrase of speech, of course. There were very few instances were she actually _did_ sweat during a workout, as per the Slayer package, but she finally managed to feel that sweet burn that meant she was using her muscles in all the right ways.

She was almost sad when the clock on the wall read five 'til, (the clock had _not_ been on her list, either, so it was most certainly one of Ianto's personal additions to the room,) but she did have an urge to shock a certain Coffee God with a giant, almost-bone-crushing hug. So she grabbed the sheer shirt she'd worn over her tanktop that day that had been tossed to the side when she'd started her fun, and headed upstairs.

She took the steps two at a time, in an unusually good mood for a Monday morning, since Mondays had become as cursed as Tuesdays in recent years, and nearly skipped into the Lobby. She was about to turn to go into the conference room when she noticed something on one of the monitors. The security camera outside... a figure walking toward the building, with an arrogant swagger to the walk... She'd know that walk anywhere.

Grinning, she hurried to the elevator, bouncing impatiently while the cog door took its sweet time rolling aside and nearly kicking the elevator to get it to move faster. And then, finally, she was running down the short hall and turning to skid into the little travel office.

He was already there, sitting in Ianto's chair with his feet propped up on the desk, a brochure held up to cover his face as he read in style. "What are you doing here?!" she demanded happily as she moved forward, prepared to plant a giant round of smoochies right on him as soon as he was in range. "You didn't say anything about visiting, you meanie, and, by the way, what are you _wear_-"

Her voice died as the man lowered the brochure and an instant later she had her gun pointed right at his head. "You aren't Spike." He looked like Spike, walked like Spike, but he definitely _wasn't_ Spike. There was no vampire feel to him, no kindness in his eyes when he looked at her. It took only one glance to tell her that this man was not the love of her life.

The self-styled _Captain_ John Hart had made his way to Cardiff to drop in on Jack. In truth, he needed some help. Bit of a sticky situation. These things happened. At any rate, he figured it'd be Jack that came up to 'greet' him. He'd just go down to the Hub himself, but last time he was there, Eye Candy looked ready to shoot him. If the Divine Ms Cooper hadn't gotten in between, he'd likely have an extra hole in his skull that he didn't need. He needed his handsome immortal buffer before he made the trip down the elevator.

What he _hadn't_ expected was the pert little blonde who'd seemed so happy to see him for a brief moment - quite an achievement, considering he'd never seen her before... but then, she apparently realized she'd never seen him either.

"What the hell kind of a name is Spike?" he asked bluntly. He took his feet down from the desk. "I'm looking for Jack. Why don't you run along and tell him Captain Hart is here to see him, okay?" he said condescendingly, making a little waving motion towards the secret passage with his hands.

Captain?! Hart?! _This_ was the psycho ex Jack had mentioned? The one who sounded a little too clingy for anyone's own good? Huh. Looks like she and Jack really did have similar tastes

Narrowing her eyes at the way the man seemed to be shooing her out of the room, she kept her gun trained on him just in case. One never knew with psycho ex-anythings. "Look, _Captain_, why don't you just sit there and keep your mouth shut before you get a face full of my boot?" she suggested none too kindly, reaching for the phone on the desk and pushing the button that would connect to the Hub.

"Jack," she said, imagining the look on her teammates' faces as her voice echoed around the stone walls downstairs, "if you wouldn't mind getting up to the tourist office now, you've got a visitor I'm about to make pulpy."

Jack was looking at the monitor before she even finished the sentence. "Great," he muttered. He looked between Ianto and Gwen. "I guess that meeting's postponed," he told them.

Ianto looked like he wanted to say something.

"Look, he helped us out last time," Jack told him. "I'll just see what he wants."

"He helped us out with a disaster that he _caused_," Ianto pointed out in a grumble.

Jack gave him a look and turned to go up to the tourist office. Ianto went unhappily back to his paperwork.

Buffy just stared at the Not Spike until she heard the door open again. "I was torn between the threat of shooting him or giving him a sound ass-kicking," she informed her boss, eyes never leaving the subject of the conversation. "The latter would be more fun for me, but the gun seems to have kept him in the chair."

Jack came up beside Buffy, putting a gentle hand on top of her gun and pressing it down towards the floor. "That won't be necessary," he told her. He looked at Hart pointedly. "Yet," he stressed.

Hart didn't move to get up yet. "I told you you needed a blonde," he pointed out cheerfully.

"Why are you here?" Jack asked, getting _right_ to the point. He wasn't any happier than his team to see the man sitting at Ianto's desk, but their history made him more willing to hear him out.

Hart spread his hands in a slightly exasperrated gesture. "Can't I even come in?" he asked.

Jack eyed him warily. "I don't see why," he said slowly. "You're not _staying_."

"I just want to have a little chat with you about a couple of things," Hart said vaguely. "We could go down to your office and talk like civilized people." He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

Jack didn't say anything, just kept his most scrutinizing look on his ex-partner.

Hart leaned forward, looking at Buffy a little warily before turning an imploring gaze towards Jack. "I'm in trouble," he said, all lightness gone from his tone.

Jack didn't move. "So?" he asked coldly.

"It's _serious_," Hart hissed. "Not just for me. It could be bad for a lot of people."

Jack rolled his eyes with a weary sigh. "Fine. Come on." He stood back, gesturing for Buffy to do the same, so John could precede them into the passageway.

Buffy was ready to fall over by the time they started heading downstairs, the lookalike at the front of the line. She'd never been trigger-happy with her gun before, but now she really wanted to shoot him. In the knee, so he wouldn't be able to run away when she kicked him in the head.

Not only did he look _like_ Spike and _move_ like Spike, but he _sounded_ like Spike, too. Exactly. That same nonchalant and arrogant confidence born of many years of doing what he wanted, when he wanted, and not having anyone tell him no. It seemed that only his eyes were different...

"You sure I can't hit him?" Buffy inquired of Jack while they rode down, not bothering to try lowering her voice. "Just a punch or three, maybe break that nose so he doesn't look like my boyfriend's evil twin?" She sounded both pouty and hopeful all at the same time.

Jack looked at her oddly. "_What?_" he asked sharply. He was going to get into possible explanations with her when they arrived at the cog door. The moment it opened Hart pulled his gun out and pointed it at Ianto, who was standing at his station, where Jack had left him. Admittedly, it was hard to see what he was doing on the other side of the coffee machine, but Jack hadn't expected quite this reaction from Hart.

"Don't try it, Eye Candy," Hart said darkly. "I don't _want_ to blow your pretty little head off."

Ianto frowned at him and looked at Jack, who was already striding into the middle of the room. From there, he icould/i see exactly what Ianto was doing. He looked at Hart.

"He's holding a _pen_," Jack informed Hart in an infuriated tone of voice. "Put that thing away!"

Hart almost reluctantly holstered the weapon. "Can't be too careful," he muttered loudly enough for everyone to hear. "He tried to kill me last time I was here."

"You tried to kill us _first_," Ianto pointed out. "And everyone else, for that matter."

Jack put his hands up to stop the argument before it escalated into Hart reminding them all that he hadn't been the mastermind of that attack, though he _had_ carried it out, and gestured towards his office.

"Office," he barked at Hart. He headed after him, glancing over his shoulder at the other three members of Torchwood. "The rest of you can go back to your work," he said firmly.

Buffy watched them walk off, glowering at the man in the funky outfit that looked like something out of a trippy pirate movie, then made a decision. She hurried after the two men who had an encyclopedia of history, catching up just as they were entering Jack's office. She slid in before Jack could shut the door.

"You said go back to work," she explained before Jack could question her. "_This_ is my work."

She went to Jack's desk where a tray of coffee had been sitting and removed everything from the tray before turning to approach the offending captain. "Weapons," she demanded, her voice and gaze made of steel. "All seven of them." She gave him a once-over and amended, "Make that eight."

John Hart was already seating himself in the chair across from Jack's desk when Buffy approached him. He put his feet up on the desk, raised an eyebrow at her, then looked past her at Jack.

Jack stood beside the desk and crossed his arms. "You heard the lady," he said non-commitally. Frankly, he would have preferred to handle the situation by himself, but he was going to back his people up before Hart.

Hart sighed in a long-suffering kind of way and pushed himself to his feet, making sure it was clear that all of this was both very silly and a great inconvenience. He dutifully began removing the weapons and placing them on the tray, looking Buffy over as he did so.

"You know," he said conversationally, "Eye Candy usually holds the tray." He gave her a flirty smile. "You're not a bad substitute though," he added, setting the last of his weapons down. He looked at Jack. "I want them _back_ this time."

Buffy had to concentrate very hard on not smacking that smile right off the bastard's face. Something weird was going on, and when weird involved Spike in any way, shape, or size, she was not a happy Slayer.

Balancing the full tray with one hand, she used the other to forcefully push the recently arrived pain in her ass back into his chair, keeping her hand firmly on his shoulder while she leaned in to speak. "Then you'd better come to terms with the fact that _he's_ not the one you have to sweet talk to get your toys back," she informed him before giving his shoulder a little pat and straightening up again.

"Have a nice chat," she called over her shoulder as she left the room.

Jack watched her go and waited for the door to close behind her before calmly moving around the desk to sit in his chair.

Hart, for his part, seemed pleasantly surprised more than anything else. He looked at Jack good-naturedly. "She's _very_ interesting," he commented. He leaned forward. "And _I_ thought Ms Cooper was fiery." He grinned wolfishly. "You just have good taste all around."

Jack didn't react. He just gave Hart an inquiring look. "You said you have a problem?" he reminded the former Time Agent. "Speak now or forever hold your peace."

**III**

Down in the Hub, Ianto cleaned the coffee machine fastidiously in an effort to avoid looking in the direction of Jack's office. He heard the door shut, the sound of Buffy's boots on the grating. He didn't look up from his work. He'd been hoping they wouldn't see Hart again. Ever. He supposed that was too much to ask. He briefly wondered if Buffy would notice that he was occupying himself with something he didn't usually do during the day, but quickly decided that he didn't care if she did. She didn't seem any happier to see Hart than the rest of them were. He ialmost/i wondered why that was, since she'd never met him, but of course the answer would be that Jack had told her about him. Jack had, apparently, told her everything in two weeks that it had taken him two years to learn. He slammed the brush down on the counter and picked up a cloth.

Buffy's hands were tight around the tray of weapons, her grip almost to the point of accidentally bending the thing in half. Truthfully, she wanted to toss the whole lot into the water at the center of the lobby, or maybe find a pile of pterodactyl poop to nestle a gun or two in, but figured that could wait until the guy actually _did_ something to her. Then she could let her evil side out to play.

Gwen had apparently wandered off to take care of something, probably checking to make sure no other guests were about to spring themselves on the team, so that left Ianto. The quietly fuming Slayer made her way over to where he was cleaning, which really was kind of odd in itself, wasn't it?, and set the tray down on a nearby table. Leaning against said table, she crossed her arms and pouted. "I _really_ want to punch that guy."

"That's pretty much the popular opinion," Ianto replied without looking up. He carried on with his work in silence for a moment, but could see from his peripheral vision that Buffy was still leaning on the table.

"What does he want?" Ianto asked grudgingly. He was curious to know if Hart had an actual reason for being there or if he was just making up excuses to see Jack.

She shrugged, not really much caring why the face thief was there so long as he left pronto. "Said he was in trouble," she mumbled, glaring up at Jack's office. "Big bad other people effected troubled." Otherwise she was fairly certain Jack would have thrown him out on his ear. She remembered the recent stories as being not so very pleasant.

Tilting her head, she pondered aloud, "Maybe a broken nose, and a scar... right along those gorgeous cheekbones..." Yeah, that would do it. Kill the resemblance good and dead.

He actually stopped what he was doing and looked at her at that last bit. "_What_?" he asked, confused.

Buffy blinked and looked back at Ianto. "What?" she repeated, wearing her own confused expression, then shook her head as realization dawned. "Oh, right. He looks like my boyfriend's evil twin clone. Sounds like him, too, the bastard. Well, the hair's different, but Spike bleaches his, so I guess that makes sense..."

Ianto looked at her for a long moment before he spoke. He put down the cloth he was using to clean the machine and took a deep breath. "Captain Hart looks like your boyfriend?" he clarified with a small amount of disbelief in his voice.

She nodded, giving Ianto a look that clearly said she didn't get what part of it he wasn't understanding. "Exactly," she confirmed. "Even the _walk_ is the same. It's... freaky." And she did not like it.

Ianto looked at her for another moment before picking up the brush again and turning his attention back to the machine. "Just be glad you didn't meet this one first, then," he advised as he worked. "He would have put you off the other one."

Buffy couldn't help it. A single, solitary laugh burst out of her, followed by a pause... and then a waterfall of giggles. "Well, to be fair," she forced out after nearly slipping off the table, "the first time I saw Spike, he told me he was going to kill me on Saturday. And then he spent the next few _years_ trying to fulfill that threat."

Ah, memories.

"And I thought _my_ personal life was ridiculous," he said laconically. He put the brush down and looked at Buffy. "And if you want to break his nose, join the queue," he told her flatly. "I was here first." He picked up the brush again and turned his attention, once again, to meticulously scrubbing every nook in the machine's surface.

"That's fair," she agreed amicably, standing away from the table and stretching her arms up over her head. "Just don't kill the coffee machine, okay?" she requested, turning to head over to her own station. "And keep an eye on those weapons for me, will ya? Need to know where they are in case they go 'missing.'"

Oh yes, Buffy Summers was a woman not to be messed with.


	12. Just a Friendly Little Chat

Jack came out of his office after about forty minutes with Hart right in front of him. Right where Jack could see him, because Jack wouldn't have him anywhere else.

"Conference Room!" he called out as he walked through the Hub, directing Hart there ahead of him.

Ianto had thoroughly cleaned the coffee machine and had moved on to tidying his very tidy workspace when Jack and Hart emerged. He spared a glare at them as they passed, unsure of whether he was glaring at Hart or the situation in general. Clearly, Jack thought whatever Hart had come here to say had some merit, because they were having a meeting about it instead of, say, having Buffy toss Hart out of the Tourist Office in an unceremonious heap. He put down the file he was sorting out and followed the group down to the sublevels.

Buffy jerked up at the sound of Jack's voice, the little cup of pens and pencils falling into her lap, a few of them rolling to the floor. She'd resorted to her old balancing act during the long stretch of boredom - it had been something to do while imagining the many ways to make this impostor _not_ look like her scrumptious boyfriend. Of course, she'd contemplated going back down to her shiny new training room and practicing those ideas, but she'd wanted to be right there when Jack came out again, so...

She tossed the heap of writing utensils onto her desk, a few more rolling back to clatter to the floor as she hurried after the others.

Ianto glanced back at her suspiciously as she hurried up behind him. "What was that clattering noise?" he asked, his eyes narrowed. Really, he just wanted to avoid thinking about Hart. And Hart and Jack. Mostly Hart and Jack.

"Uhm...," Buffy stuttered, suddenly feeling like she was back in high school, with Giles asking her one of those Slayer questions she was supposed to know the answer to, but definitely hadn't. "Nothing!" Another few steps and she just couldn't avoid his pointed gaze anymore. "I'll clean it up," she half-grumbled, half-pouted.

He was about to point out that that wasn't what he'd asked her, but they'd reached the conference room. Jack was standing at the far end and Hart was slouched lazily in the chair to one side of him with one foot on the table. Ianto took the chair on Jack's other side, opposite Hart, giving him a glare for good measure as he sat down.

Buffy took the chair beside Hart, leaving the one next to Ianto for Gwen, which was just fine with the Welsh woman. After the poisonous kiss incident, she hadn't been particularly fond of the man. The incident with Gray hadn't helped her opinion of him any.

Buffy, for her part, wanted to be within smacking range. Just in case.

Hart gave Buffy an appreciative leer. "Well, hello Blondie," he said cheerfully. "Did you drop by to return my belongings?"

"Enough," Jack told him, a warning note in his voice.

Hart was undeterred. He spared Jack a glance, then turned his gaze back to Buffy. "He's the jealous type, you know. Gets all grumpy when I look at other people," he said, looking Buffy _over_more than looking _at_ her.

She raised an eyebrow, but didn't move to stop his looking. He'd only be encouraged by that. Well, she was pretty sure he'd be encouraged by _anything_ she did, at this point. "Really?" she questioned sarcastically. "I thought he got grumpy when we had unwanted visitors. My mistake."

Gwen smirked. She'd certainly come to appreciate Buffy's unique way of doing things over the month they'd worked together.

"I wouldn't know," Hart replied smoothly. "I've never had to see him deal with one."

Jack, standing at the head of the table with his arms crossed, cleared his throat loudly.

Hart turned his head towards Jack lazily and raised an eyebrow at him.

"I thought you called this an 'emergency'," Jack said, unconvinced.

Hart shrugged. "If you call the potential deaths of millions an emergency..."

Jack turned his gaze to everyone _else_ at the table and spoke over any further comment Hart might have.

"It would seem our '_guest_' has been selling alien artifacts," he announced.

"You can't get far on the Earth without local currency!" Hart protested.

"So get off of it," Ianto suggested dryly.

Gwen chimed in with a, "I second that idea," in a very perturbed tone.

"I third it," Buffy agreed, adding, "as long as I get to kick his ass before he goes." She wouldn't dare pass up the opportunity if it was presented.

Jack, for his part, ignored the interruption and carried on as Hart gave his team the evil eye.

"He, apparently, _accidentally_ sold Warp Star that was inside another, much more _harmless_ artifact..." Here he gave Hart another deeply unconvinced look.

"Hey," Hart argued, "why would I sell a _Warp Star_ to a human on _purpose_?"

"Because the only consolation is money?" Ianto suggested coldly, repeating Hart's words to him at the British Gas building. He turned to Jack. "What's a Warp Star?" His tone was all business. He was unimpressed with Hart, the fact that he kept showing up to cause them all trouble and the fact that Jack still hadn't neutralized the threat he posed properly, like he would have done if the man was an alien. The very least they could have done was wipe his memory and dump him somewhere. Jack hadn't, and Ianto was convinced the reasons were _all_ sentimental ones. He certainly didn't like the idea that Jack had any remaining 'sentiments' for Hart.

"Wait, I know this!" Buffy exclaimed, her eyes a little wider than usual. "One of the people on that ship thing had one of those, right?" she questioned Jack. In usual Buffy fashion, exact names and descriptive features didn't really make it into her vocabulary. "It's like... a tiny, tiny bomb with a not-so-tiny explosion."

Gwen looked at her oddly for a moment, then turned her attention to Jack. She certainly hadn't heard _that_ detail from Jack's recent adventure helping to save reality. He'd pretty much glossed over the details, going for the big, broad ideas instead. While her boss had gotten better about letting them in on bits of his life, he still had a tendency to under-share.

anto also glanced at Buffy, then at Jack. He'd put on that implaccable expression he wore as a mask, by then. Jack would know what it meant. He didn't want Hart to see him glare icy daggers at their leader as, _again_, he'd told Buffy everything and them nothing.

Jack's gaze lingered on Ianto for just a moment before it flicked around to each of the other occupants of the room. "That's correct," he said. "We need to recover the Warp Star without the 'customer' realizing what he has and without setting it off."

"Quicker would be better," Hart added. "Set off in the wrong place..." he let his voice trail off ominously and made an 'explosion' motion with his hands.

Ianto rolled his eyes and looked at Jack, rather than Hart. "And where, exactly, was it sold?"

"London," Hart answered quickly. "Roadtrip!" He looked at Jack with a lascivious grin. "Do I get to pick my own roommate?" he asked innocently, pointedly sliding his eyes down Jack's body.

Ianto contemplated shooting Hart under the table as Jack gave the former Time Agent a withering glance. He laughed sharply. "_You're_ not _coming_," he told Hart, as though he didn't understand why that hadn't been obvious to the other man. "But don't worry," he added in a mock-sympathetic tone. "I have a nice roommate for you. Six feet tall? Growls a lot? She'll keep you company while you pace around in your room downstairs."

"You're not locking me in the _cells_!" Hart exclaimed. "You don't even know how long you'll be gone."

"Better ration your food, then," Ianto advised sagely. Hart glared at him.

Buffy smirked and advised the protesting man, "I think this is the perfect opportunity for, oh, what was it my Watcher called it... Oh yeah, 'self-reflection'. Maybe reevaluate your current direction in life. Plan to scope out a career fair."

Gwen was too far gone by the end of Buffy's speech to keep in her laughter. It was a precious thing to see someone who didn't let Hart get to them.

Jack turned to Ianto. "Will you make the arrangements, please? I want to be in London by supper time." He looked at Gwen. "Take _him_ with you and find out everything you can about the buyer," he told her, inclining his head towards Hart. He looked at Buffy. "You go with them and watch him."

When Jack finished talking, everyone got up from the table and headed back upstairs.

Ten minutes into the question-and-answer session, Buffy was ready to shoot _Captain_ John Hart right in the head. She didn't think Gwen would protest. The other woman looked to be on the verge of pulling out her own hair to strangle him with. They'd been going round in circles, Hart avoiding giving much more than tiny bits of information in between his infuriating routine, and it was getting on Buffy's last nerve.

"A few more details about the buyer's security system _would_ be helpful," Gwen growled out, very close to losing it completely. Buffy just watched, hoping the show started soon.

Ianto was tired of listening to Hart's voice and absolutely sick of looking at Hart's stupid face. He didn't linger at his work station. He grabbed a few things and headed down to his desk in the archives to carry out Jack's instructions.

Jack hung around, watching Gwen and Buffy trying to look up information in the system based on the intentionally sparse information Hart was grudgingly giving them before he got restless and headed down to the archive himself. If Hart didn't cooperate by the time they were ready to leave, _Jack_ would ask for the information and Hart wasn't going to like it.

Jack strolled through the cool, still archives until he reached Ianto's desk. Ianto didn't turn or look up from whatever he was doing on the computer. Jack perched on his desk next to his elbow.

"How's it going?" he asked casually.

"We can leave in about two hours," he said. "We should be in London around six pm."

Jack nodded. He noticed how Ianto's tone was strictly clinical and his posture was tense. "Are you alright?" he asked.

"I don't like him here," Ianto said tersely. "He's dangerous."

"I know," Jack conceded. "But a Warp Star is _more_ dangerous. Especially in London. The sheer number of people that would be killed if it went off..."

"Ah. Right. And why does _Buffy_ even know what a Warp Star is?" he asked.

Jack sighed and slid off the desk so he was standing beside Ianto's chair. "I explained this already..."

"You chatted," Ianto said flatly. "I know." He finally looked up at Jack. "The Warp Star thing is _relevant_ to our work, Jack. Why would you tell a _stranger_ what happened on the Crucible, but you won't tell us?"

"What, Buffy's a _stranger_ now?"

"She was when you _told_ her," Ianto argued.

Jack took a deep breath and ran a hand absently along the back of Ianto's collar. "Look, that place... I don't know what it did to us. Things were different there. I'm sorry."

It was when Gwen started turning a shade of reddish-purple that Buffy pushed her toward the lift and told her to go get some air up top. Despite the fact that she didn't want to be left all alone with the Spike-wannabe, her teammate's sanity ranked a little higher than her own mental health needs.

Narrowing her eyes in Hart's direction, Buffy angled her chair so she'd be able to see him out of the corner of her eye while she continued searching the computer systems for information. "Try anything and I start breaking ribs," she informed him. "A person can lead a very active lifestyle with broken ribs... Just a little more pain and wheezing." She should known, she'd had more than enough nights of being a little worse for wear after long hours of slayage.

Jack emerged from the archive and walked over to where Buffy was working at Gwen's computer. Hart sat nearby. Gwen was nowhere to be seen.

Jack frowned. "Where's Gwen?" he asked.

"Upstairs," Buffy answered distractedly. "Pretending she doesn't want to kill _him_." A few more keystrokes and the blonde woman was making an enraged growling-yell at the computer before shoving herself away from it.

"I bet he did this on purpose!" she exclaimed at Jack, pointing at the completely not innocent-looking man in question. "I can't find _anything_!" It didn't help that computers were still the bane of her existence.

"Go upstairs and help Gwen, or downstairs and help Ianto," Jack told her without even looking at her. His eyes were on Hart. He pulled up a chair and sat directly opposite the other man, but didn't speak. He wasn't going to until Buffy had done as he'd asked and left the room. Hart, on the other hand, was beginning to look uneasy. He looked at Buffy.

Well, _that_ didn't look good. For Hart, anyway. And well, they did kinda need him alive and coherent for at least a little while longer. Not that she was concerned for him, she just didn't want London to be completely destroyed.

"You sure?" she questioned hesitantly, standing and leaning against her desk. "If we're pulling out the big guns, I could-"

The world tilted and Buffy fell forward as she completely lost her balance, her vision going white as images forced themselves into her mind. A small, shining gemstone rolling across pavement, a red double-decker bus in the background. It was like she was crouching down to pick it up, she could see her own hand reaching for it, when an elegant gloved one beat her to it. She looked up as the figure stood, a displeased look on her face. The Queen. Why was the Queen in the middle of a busy London street. _Isn't it pretty, Slayer? So very pretty_... were the words that flittered through her mind, moments before the world in the vision exploded, the sound resonating in her mind.

She gasped and blinked at the concrete floor of the hub, like she expected it to fall away at any moment.

Jack and Hart both stood up as Buffy fell, but Jack shoved Hart roughly back into his chair. Considering the look Jack had just been giving him, Hart wisely decided not to get up again. He'd seen that look before and it wasn't one he'd ever wanted to be on the receiving end of. He hadn't, in fact, thought Jack ever _would_ look at him like that because he didn't think Jack had it in him to do the things that it implied.

Jack crouched and gently put a hand on Buffy's arm. "Buffy?" he asked, concern lacing his voice. "Buffy?"

She took a second to catch her breath, waiting to make sure the ground really wouldn't collapse from under her if she moved, then looked up at Jack. "I'm good," she told him, reaching up to set her hand over his. "No dying here, promise."

He gave her a stern look. "What happened?" he asked. He wasn't going to have her shrugging it off. She'd just passed out in the middle of the Hub. What if she passed out in the middle of a fight?

Now that she knew for certain what was going on, Buffy wasn't about to try hiding it from Jack. Especially not after what she'd just seen.

"Remember how I mentioned that Slayers have those visiony dream things sometimes?" she questioned, knowing he'd remember it with perfect clarity. "Kinda just had one. And uh, wasn't pretty."

Jack pulled her to her feet, glancing darkly at Hart. He released her in the direction of the stairs to the archives with a gentle shove. "Go see Ianto," he told her in a tone that broached no argument, already turning back towards Hart.

Hart tried to look like he wasn't trying not to squirm in his seat. He would have outright asked Buffy not to leave him alone with Jack, if he thought speaking was a good idea just then. It would probably only provoke his former partner. The irony of the fact that being alone with Jack was _usually_ his goal wasn't entirely lost on him.

Buffy looked back only once before carefully making her way downstairs to the archives, Ianto's favorite hiding place. She caught a reflection of herself in a glass door as she passed, and nearly cringed at how pale she had become. It reminded her of what they'd heard had happened to Cordelia over time, as the PTB's visions got more and more powerful over time. What if...

She didn't linger on those thoughts, instead pushing herself forward until she reached the room that was basically her teammate's personal domain.

Ianto looked up when he heard footsteps that definitely didn't belong to Jack coming towards his desk. Buffy was approaching, looking pale and a little shaken.

"What's going on?" he asked mildly. "Are you alright? Jack's cut the security feeds from the main Hub."

"He's having a little 'chat' with our 'guest'," she told Ianto in a much more subdued voice than normal as she walked over to his desk and unceremoniously plopped onto the floor beside it. Was kinda nice to just _sit_ and not feel like the ground was moving. "He actually looked a little scared - you'd have liked seeing it," she said, managing a tiny smirk.

Truthfully, Ianto appeared a little alarmed at the implication, rather than pleased. He looked down at where she sat on the floor.

"There's another chair just there," he said with a nod towards the other side of his desk. She still looked poorly and her voice was uncharacteristically low, but he'd already asked once if she was alright and she hadn't answered. He didn't push it, but he was keeping an eye on her.

As soon as he'd finished speaking, he could hear Buffy's phone starting to buzz and did a bad job of suppressing an amused smile. "What's that?" he asked. "It's a bit late for lunch."

She looked up at him with an equally uncharacteristic mild glare and pulled the buzzing object from her pocket, the alarm symbol hopping around on the screen, mocking her. She pressed the usual button to end the buzzing, but... it had no effect. She tried again. Again, nothing happened. She tried accessing the menu, remembering there was something in there that controlled alarms...

The more times she tried and failed, the more frantic her expression became, her frayed nerves finally sending her over the edge. The phone flew from her hand and out into the hall, where it hit the wall and fell to the concrete with a clatter of many pieces.

There were very few times when Buffy completely lost it in front of people, and this time it had happened in front of someone who wasn't Jack. This wasn't good.

Ianto could see she was becoming frustrated with it, the mirth very quickly leaving the situation. He had started to reach for it, to offer his help, when she suddenly whipped it at the wall. The archives had concrete walls and floors and the Slayer had super strength. The phone literally shattered.

He flinched slightly at the sound of it exploding into fragments, turning to look at the electronic carnage before returning his gaze to Buffy. "Feel better?" he asked dryly.

"Sorry," she mumbled, leaning forward to wrap her arms around her legs so she could hide her face in them. "I'll pay for it." She knew it was mostly the principle of the thing, that it was her responsibility to take care of her equipment, but... A frustrated, frazzled Slayer didn't really think first before destroying things. Wasn't exactly in the new handbook. (The fact that she'd helped_write_ that handbook meant absolutely nothing.)

That wasn't what he'd asked.

"That won't be necessary," he told her. "I didn't really think you were joking about your track record. I've budgeted for you." He glanced over his shoulder at the scattered bits of metal and plastic that had formerly been a perfectly serviceable mobile phone. "But I'm not cleaning that up," he added with a mock-sterness he hoped she would understand was a joke.

"Okay," Buffy murmured from her hiding place, not even remotely registering what he'd said as being a joke. Taking a deep breath, she leaned back to rest against the leg of his desk again. He seemed so much taller from this angle.

"Big red buses," she said suddenly, not looking at Ianto. "Lots of people. Queen of England. Where does that sound like? London?"

Ianto frowned. "That would be London," he confirmed. "We're leaving for there in a little over an hour and a half. Why?"

She sighed heavily, rubbing a hand across her forehead. "Guess he wasn't lying about _that_ then," she mumbled, the finally tilted her head to look up at him.

"Slayers have these... vision-type dreams, very prophetic, very cryptic," she explained tiredly. "Always very impending doomy. I... kinda had one upstairs. While I was awake."

Ianto expression again assumed a small degree of alarm. He checked the CCTV, but there was still no signal from the main Hub.

"Does Jack know?" he asked. This time it wasn't about who had told what to whom (or who hadn't), but if there was impending doom, Jack had to be told.

She nodded, looking up at the ceiling. "He was there when it happened," she elaborated. "Sent me down here."

"I think his sending you down here had less to do with your vision and more to do with... whatever he's doing up there with Captain Hart." He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and turned his attention to his computer screen. He'd rather not think about what was going on upstairs.

"Probably," she acknowledged, thinking to herself that he could have sent her to Gwen, though, but had instead steered her straight to Ianto. That had to mean a little something.

She was silent for a long moment, then finally whispered, "I could see the fire on my skin. From the explosion. Just for a second, burning, and then..." Then it was like everything had ceased to exist.

Ianto's expression softened to concern as he looked back down at her, still sitting on the floor. "That must be... disconcerting," he commented. He didn't know what else to say. She'd suggested this was normal for her, so 'I'm sorry' didn't seem appropriate. "I assume you were seeing what will happen if we don't find the Warp Star," he said. "I can't say it sounds particularly pleasant. I'd suggest we make sure we find it, then."

He picked up a folder containing several sheets of paper and handed it to Buffy. "Here's a list of black market alien artifact dealers in London. I took it from what we were able to salvage of the Canary Wharf databases. If anyone happened upon the Warp Star without knowing what it was, they might take it to one of these people to be appraised. The trade in specialty items requires knowing some pretty specific people. I expect Captain Hart is familiar to some of them by now."

Buffy flipped through the pages in the folder, skimming over the information, digesting it and filing away the gist of what would be important to the mission. She was nearly to the end when one name caught her eye. "This one," she said, handing the page to Ianto. "We should start there. That dealer has a history with jewelry, and this thing... it's _gorgeous_. It'd be worth a lot as a regular gem, but add in that it's _alien_... If the buyer knows of them, they'll go there first."

Ianto took the page from her. "If the buyer has a habit of buying alien artifacts, then the buyer will know him." He glanced at his monitor. Still nothing from upstairs. He took the rest of the folder back and put the page with the dealer Buffy had pointed out on top. They needed a way to track the Warp Star down if Hart couldn't provide them with any useful information.

"How do you know so much about that dealer?" he asked. It was weird the kinds of things Buffy knew and didn't know. Blackmarket jewelry dealers in London (a city he wasn't sure she'd even been to, judging by her need to confirm whether her vision had, in fact, been London)? Check. How to turn off your mobile phone's alarm settings without smashing it into a billion little pieces? Not so much.

Buffy reached up to pull her hair out of its ponytail, running her fingers through the golden strands until it lay freely across her shoulders. "We've got a branch of the New Council in London," she explained. "Pretty big set-up, actually, with about a hundred active-duty girls operating at any time, plus our Watchers, witches, and support teams. We keep tabs on anything demon or magic-related, and our guy," she gestured at the folder, "has just as much of a yen for mystical jewelry as he does for alien."

"Ah," Ianto said simply, with a nod of comprehension.

He looked through some other documents he had on his desk and glanced at his watch. He looked at the screen. Still nothing from upstairs. He considered going up, but Jack had sent Buffy down, which meant he didn't want them there for this. Still smarting slightly from the earlier perceived snub of Jack telling Buffy things he never told them, he was half tempted to go up there for just that reason, but, frankly, his loyalty to Jack outweighed the transgression and he couldn't fool himself otherwise.

"I hope he winds things up soon," he commented outloud. "If he wants to get things underway on time, I need to get some things together upstairs."

"I don't think he'll take any longer than he absolutely has to," Buffy told him in a reassuring tone, at too awkward of an angle to reach up and touch his shoulder like she might usually have done. "He honestly doesn't seem to have been enjoying any of this. I think you're more than safe on that front."

Ianto looked at her sharply, taken aback by the bluntness of her observation. "What do you mean?" he asked, feeling a _slight_ embarrassed flush starting just under his collar.

Buffy looked away to give him back just a tiny bit of that feeling of power that she seemed to have stripped from him with her observation. Yeah, she had a tendency to do that. "The majorly gorgeous ex shows up, all strut and ego, like he owns the place? It's enough to make anyone a little uneasy." She winced a little before adding, "Course, I was usually in _Jack's_ position, but still. Fact still stands that he's not gonna pick this guy over you."

Ianto just stared at her for a moment. Of course, he was looking at the side of her head, because she'd looked away from him.

"Um..." he started uncomfortably, but didn't know how to continue the thought and shuffled some papers on his desk instead. Of _course_ she'd been in Jack's position in this scenario. That just stood to reason, didn't it? And _majorly gorgeous_? He certainly wouldn't go that far, but he didn't voice that opinion, because he remembered that Hart allegedly looked just like Buffy's boyfriend. And even if he _shared_ that opinion? He'd never admit to it.

"I'm not..." His voice trailed off again and he gave up on trying to answer her. It wasn't bad enough that he _looked_ like an idiot. He didn't need to _sound_ like one too.

Buffy let the silence stretch between them for a few moments before looking up at him again. "Wise move," she said sagely. "Too much talking when uncomfortably flustered generally leads to digging yourself into a hole." She stood quickly, brushing off her pants before shooting him a grin. "I've been there too."

She stretched her arms over her head, arching her back like a cat after a nap, then dropped her arms to her sides again. "C'mon," she said with a nod of her head to the door. "Let's go make a lot of noise on the stairs." Yes, it was a very high school thing to do, but some habits never die.

"No," Ianto said quickly, going so far as to get up and grab her arm to pull her back. "Jack will let us know when we can come up." He realized he was holding on to her arm and let go.

"I don't know how much Jack's told you about his past," he said. Probably more than he'd told Ianto, but Ianto didn't say that part. "He doesn't talk about it much or in any detail. From what he has told me, he's done a lot of things he isn't proud of. You said Captain Hart looked scared? Maybe he has reason to be. He knew Jack back then." Ianto stepped backwards to perch on the edge of the desk, where Jack had been sitting earlier. "He doesn't... he doesn't like to be associated with who he was then. He doesn't want us to know about it." He gave Buffy a stern look. "We go up when he says," he told her firmly.

Well, Ianto definitely passed _that_ test.

Buffy just smiled and nodded easily. It had taken a while to get used to this whole not being in charge thing, but a month into the game, she liked to think she'd mostly gotten the hang of it. "Okay, chill, Ianto. We'll wait."

Hooking her thumbs through the belt loops of her jeans, she tilted her head at the younger man and slowly smiled. In a soft voice, she said, "You really do care about him, don't you?" It had been rare to see this side of Ianto during the month they'd worked together, but she was thankful for the experience. "I'm glad. He deserves to have someone like you in his life."

He blinked, looking away self-consciously for a moment, before sliding off the edge of the desk to sit back down in his chair again. "Thanks," he mumbled, reorganizing some already well-organized files.

It wasn't that he was ashamed or thought he had anything to hide, it was just that, unless they were making wisecracks about it (which he didn't have to dignify with a response most of the time), nobody had ever talked about it so nonchalantly at _work_. They just _didn't_. Buffy, for her part, clearly didn't have a problem with it, but they couldn't say that every potential future Torchwood employee would be okay with the fact that one of their coworkers was dating the boss, regardless of the fact that Ianto still did all of the organization's dirty work.

He was relieved when Jack's voice came over the comms and the CCTV feed from the main Hub flickered back to life on his monitor. Hart was still sitting in the same chair, looking a little perturbed... but unharmed.

"Ianto, would you and Buffy come up here, please?"

Glancing at the Welshman, Buffy gave him another grin before hurrying from the room, eager to finally be getting down to the apocalypse-diverting. Waiting just wasn't her style, especially when it involved sitting around. Getting to see that particular brand of surprise on Ianto's face had pretty much made it worth it, though.

The cog door was just rolling aside for Gwen to step into the lobby when Buffy got there herself, and she saw the dark-haired woman adjusting something on her earpiece. That explained the sudden appearance, then.

She had to admit she was a little disappointed that Hart didn't appear to have a scratch on him. She really needed to talk to Jack about his interrogation methods regarding annoying house guests. They could do with some fine-tuning.

Jack looked at Ianto. "I've sent the information to your PDA," he told him. Ianto went to his desk to pick up the aforementioned device. He looked at Jack and nodded, indicating that he'd received it. He skimmed through it. First and last name (the real one, presumably, and not the one Hart had given Gwen and Buffy that didn't show up in any database), home address, workplace... it was all there.

Jack looked at Gwen. "Come with me, we need to get the SUV ready."

Ianto looked up. "I can do that when I'm done here," he pointed out. It was _usually_ his job.

Jack shook his head. "No. I want all the information organized so anything we need to know is at our fingertips the moment we need it. That's what I want you doing."

Ianto nodded and logged into his computer terminal. He had it linked to his computer in the archives, so he could work at either one. He pulled up the files he'd been working on downstairs, including the list of buyers, and began loading them into the PDA.

Jack looked at Buffy next. "Keep an eye on _him_," he said, pointing at Hart, before turning to leave with Gwen.

Somehow, it seemed to Buffy that ever since Giles had waltzed into her living all those years ago with a group of Potentials in tow, she'd been stuck with a glorified babysitting job. Who was she to think that might change when she joined Torchwood? Now she just got to babysit things that _weren't_ hormonal, super-strength teenage girls. Though, at that very moment, she was having trouble deciding which job she'd rather have.

"Hey, _buddy_," she said with dripping sarcastic hostility, glancing across the room to make sure Hart's tray of weapons was still safely not within his reach. So far so good. Now if she could just make it to naptime...

Hart glanced at her disinterestedly, then gazed around the Hub in silence for a bit, letting his eyes find Ianto, working quietly at his computer, slowly. Still silent, he watched the administrator work for a little while, pointedly ignoring Buffy's presence.

Ianto could see Hart's reflection in his monitor and could feel the older man's eyes on him, but intentionally refrained from reacting. Hart _wanted_ to make him uncomfortable.

Hart must have gotten bored after a bit, because he didn't maintain his silence much longer.

"You know, Eye Candy, I can tell you what your first mistake was," he said casually. Ianto ignored him, so he kept talking. "See, I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong, and your _first_mistake was thinking that you have something with him that actually _means_ anything. You don't want to know how many of you I've seen come and go," he elaborated. "And that was back when he was _mortal_." Ianto continued to pointedly ignore Hart, but his posture had become more tense. "Now that he has all the time in the universe, how long do you think he's going to stay here with _you_? Not that he has to leave. He has options aplenty right here," he added, now taking the time to look Buffy over wolfishly. "You're young and pretty," he continued, turning his gaze back to Ianto's back, "but either way, he'll get tired of you and what can only be your relatively limited experience in satisfying a man... probably sooner rather than later," he finished mildly, as though he'd been talking about the weather or a football match.

Ianto turned around slowly and looked at the former Time Agent. He wanted to challenge him, but he didn't know what to say to all that. He knew Hart was winding him up, but, all the same, Hart had touched on things Ianto had genuine concerns about, not that he'd admit it to anyone else.

Hart smiled indulgently. "Don't worry, Eye Candy. If nothing else, he's highly _skilled_. Just relax and try to enjoy the _ride_ while it lasts. Anyway, I'm sure when he's done with you, he'll keep you around to fetch him his coffee and take out his trash."

Buffy had had more than enough of this crap. She'd been wanting to get her hands on the arrogant bastard in a very violent way, and now he'd just presented her with the perfect opportunity. An opportunity she wouldn't pass up for a lifetime of expensive shoes, not after what he'd just put Ianto through.

Hopping off the desk she'd been sitting on, Buffy was beside Hart in seconds, leaning down so her lips very nearly brushed his ear as she whispered, "Actually, I think _I'm_ the one who's going to be taking out the trash." Pulling back, she grabbed a handful of the man's shirt to haul him to his feet. "Let's start with you, 'kay?"

The punch to his jaw wasn't nearly as powerful as she would have liked, but he did need to be able to talk, sadly, just in case they needed answers from him later. Though that theory was always up for negotiation in her book.

Ianto flinched when Buffy attacked Hart, more from being shaken out of Hart's little spell than the actual violence of it.

Hart fell onto the floor, flat on his back, and didn't make any move to get up. He laughed and looked up at Buffy. "So quick to jump to the defense of your dear Captain's honour. Are you sure he deserves it? You don't know him like I do." He looked over at Ianto. "Has he actually _promised_ you anything?"

"None of your business," he retorted quietly, but without hesitation.

"He hasn't, has he?" Hart shot back, and it was a statement, not a question. There was just the smallest amount of triumph on his face when he looked at Buffy again, like saying 'I told you so'.

Buffy walked toward him, stepping over him so one foot was on either side of his waist as she glared down at him. The angle would make her seem taller, not that she really needed help with intimidation once she really got going. She and Jack had that in common.

"You really think you know Jack?" she questioned him quietly, her tone harsh. If he wanted to play dirty, they'd play dirty. "Seriously? Seems to me that if you two had such a deep, heart-wrenching soulmate thing going on, he might not be so quick to _kick your ass out_ every time you darken his doorstep. And if he wants his distractions to be young and pretty, I guess there's a reason you don't make the cut."

Hart's expression became darker as he looked up at her. "Maybe not," he spat, "but _you_ would." He made show of looking her over from his particular vantage point. "You're just his type, as well." He looked past her to where Ianto still stood. Ianto hadn't moved since he'd turned around. "It's _so_ like him to line up your replacement before he's even told you that you're being replaced! Not that I blame him. You're easy on the eyes, but she's got _fire_."

"_Fire_?" Buffy repeated incredulously, almost amused at the situation. "What are you, a bad TV movie? No, you're not even that high in the ranks. You're right there with the soap operas middle-aged housewives watch in between laundry and making dinner."

She shifted her weight so she could set her right foot on his chest, giving her just enough leverage to be able to lean forward, hands folded on her knee. "And, y'know, if I was at all interested, I might be offended. Little, tiny bit. But... nope. Not. Even after spending two weeks with him in a luxurious hotel. So you're gonna have to work a little harder to push my buttons."

Hart smirked. "I'm not interested in _your_ buttons," he said. He glanced down her body slightly and his smirk widened. "Well, maybe a _little_." He glanced past her at Ianto again and was about to say something when Jack rejoined them.

"What in the _hell_ is going on?" he asked the room in general. He looked at Ianto, who was still standing a short distance from Buffy and Hart. "Are you done there?" he asked, nodding towards the computer.

Ianto shook himself out of his thoughts on Hart's words and his observation of Buffy's altercation with him and turned quickly back towards the computer. "Almost," he mumbled.

Jack raised a suspcious eyebrow at that, because slacking off wasn't part of Ianto's character and the younger man was well aware that they had a ticking clock hanging over them.

He turned his attention to Buffy, standing on Hart. "What'd he do now?"

Buffy sent one last glare down to Hart before moving away from him. She hadn't gotten in nearly enough violence as she would have liked, but she was thoroughly satisfied to see a slightly dusty bootprint right on the front of his pretty coat. She hoped Ianto got to see it, might cheer him up a little.

"Oh, nothing big," she told Jack with a closed off grin as she turned away from the latest pain in her rear end. "We were just having a nice little chat."

Hart scoffed. "I don't know what kind of operation you're running these days," he said, "but she assaulted me for absolutely no reason."

Jack folded his arms with a 'this ought to be good' expression on his face.

"I was sitting in my chair making idle conversation with Eye Candy over there," he said, nodding towards Ianto. Jack raised an unimpressed eyebrow at the use of that particular nickname, but Hart ignored it.

"She wasn't even involved in the conversation and she attacked me." He glanced over at Buffy before leaning in towards Jack conspiratorially. "Are you sure she's entirely stable?"

Jack didn't dignify that with a response. He looked at Buffy. "Take him down to the cells. We're leaving soon." He didn't wait for them to go before turning his back on the little scene and going over to stand next to Ianto, glancing at his computer screen before looking at him instead. "Do you want to drive there and I'll drive back?" he asked in a much gentler, warmer tone than he'd used since he came back from helping Gwen load up the SUV.

Since Hart had yet to get up, Buffy allowed herself the pleasure of once again hauling him to his feet, the movement quick and fluid so he barely had time to catch his balance before she was forcibly shoving him toward the stairs to the cells. Her Slayer hearing picked up Jack's words from across the room as they were descending, and she smiled inwardly.

Yeah, they'd make it.

Hart regained some of his smugness and swagger as they walked down the stairs. "You know, it's easy for you to _say_ you're not interested in front of Eye Candy back there, and it's nice of you to spare his feelings and all, but, _really_?" he said halting their little stroll for a moment and turning to look at her. "_Everyone_ falls for him eventually." He raised an eyebrow at her. "Can you honestly stand there and, regardless of whatever else you're involved with, say that you don't find him attractive at _all_?"

Buffy wondered how much trouble she'd be in if she just shoved the ass down some stairs, let gravity take its course and all. She was pretty certain Gwen and Ianto would cheer, probably throw confetti, and then buy a round of drinks at the bar down the street.

"Contrary to what I assume is your popular belief," she told him with disdain, "finding someone attractive doesn't require a burning desire to jump his bones." Giving her head a little shake so her hair wasn't falling in her face, she continued, "_You_ look like a carbon copy of my boyfriend, and all I wanna do is shove you down some stairs."

Well, it wouldn't hurt for him to know it.

A very amused smile settled on Hart's face. "I wouldn't be surprised if that was your usual foreplay," he said slyly. He looked her over again. "I'm pretty sure it'd get _me_ off. Imagine how it would go over with Immortal Boy? _He_ can't even get _hurt_. I should know, too, I pushed him off of a skyscraper once. It didn't take an hour for him to come 'round and tell me off."

He turned and started strolling leisurely down the stairs again, thinking it might be better to get to the bottom on his own power, regardless of what he was saying to wind up Jack's new guard dog.

"Then again, maybe it's Eye Candy you fancy. You were quick to jump to his defense." He looked back at Buffy and smirked as he got to the bottom. "He's a bit of alright. Kind of dull, but I wouldn't kick him out of bed."

Buffy smirked when he resumed heading down the stairs, glad to see her words had at least struck a tiny thread of a cord. Probably that self-preservation instinct he apparently had in spades.

"Me either," she admitted easily, still wanting to smack him upside the head. "But, considering I've got a vampire boyfriend with an ego the size of Jack's and very specific drapery needs, I've kinda got my hands full."

She pushed open the squeaky metal door to the row of cells and gave Hart a good shove inside for the fun of it. "And, yeah, I like my foreplay a little rough," she continued just as easily, without an ounce of shame or hesitation. "Not that _you'll_ ever find out."

It had been a long time since that infamous year when everything had fallen apart. She was a different woman now, unafraid of being honest about her life, her wants and needs and her 'true nature', as Spike had phrased it back then. There were parts of Buffy that were innately dark and violent, thanks to the actions of the Shadow Men so many thousands of years ago, but that didn't make her a monster.

He chuckled when she shoved him. "Maybe not," he admitted. Suddenly, he turned and shoved her hard into the door of the cells, running past her and up the stairs without looking back. If Jack wasn't going to bring him to London, he was _out_ of there. No way he was sitting in the cells for a few days while they were all gone.

Buffy was dazed for all of .2 seconds before dashing after him. She caught up to him halfway up the stairs, tackling him so they both hit the ground hard, even sliding down a few steps. "Where do you think _you're_ going?" she questioned, a rush of energy coursing through her as the Slayer inside readied for a fight. This was hands down the best part of her job - she hadn't gotten nearly enough time in the field at the NC the past few years. It was just what a girl needed in her retirement.

"Get _off_ of me!" he shouted, trying to push her away from him so he could get up again. Apparently, though, she was immovable as a _wall_ when she was _ready_ for it. He cursed and tried to wriggle out of her grasp. "I'm not sitting in the some dank cell for a week while you lot mess around in London!" he declared through clenched teeth, trying to pull himself up using the railing.

"Like we're really gonna let you go cause _more_ trouble while we clean up your mess," she said with sarcasm as she adjusted her grip and started righting herself with a downward pull so she could drag him back down the stairs. His hold on the railing was a bit of a problem though, and she gave him an extra hard tug to separate him from it... but didn't count on the inertia sending them both tumbling down the stairs instead.

He landed hard on the concrete floor, stars dancing briefly in front of his vision. He realized, as it cleared, that her face was just inches from his, as she'd landed on top of him.

_Paralyzing lip gloss,_ he thought. _Don't leave home without it._

He grabbed her collar and pulled her lips to his, giving her as lingering a kiss as he could. He wanted to make sure the toxin kicked in as quickly as possible.

Oh, Buffy knew all about Captain John Hart and his past escapades with Torchwood. Which meant she knew about his little trick that he'd pulled on Gwen - she'd just been waiting for him to try it on her, too. And it was funny: the lips were the same, but his kiss... Completely different from Spike's.

She pulled back out of his grip and couldn't resist giving him another good punch, this one landing on his cheek bone. Again, it wasn't hard enough to break bones, but he'd certainly remember her for a few days.

Leaning in when his head was turned from the punch, she murmured into his ear, "Paralyzing lip gloss, right? Neat trick." She could actually _feel_ the toxin working its way through her system, making her movements just a tiny bit sluggish, but still leaving her above 'normal human' status. She had him on his feet moments later, shoving him back against one of the empty cell doors before pressing her body against his and smashing their lips together again. Just enough distraction, hopefully, to let her get the door open.

The cell door swung open before Buffy could even get to the button.

Jack leaned against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, his arms crossed, looking generally unimpressed. Ianto stood beside him holding a gun, but it was pointed at the floor.

Hart looked over at them as soon as Buffy's lips left his. "She's a _maniac_," he protested, but Jack didn't move from where he was standing and his expression didn't change. Hart slid out from between Buffy and the wall and walked grudgingly into the cell.

As soon as the door was securely closed, Buffy turned to her 'rescuers' snapped her fingers in that disappointed manner and said, "Damn, I wanted to see the look on his face when I shoved him in. You guys couldn't have waited five more seconds?"

Glancing back at Hart, she reached out to tap her nails on the transparent partition now separating them and told him with a smirk, "By the way, your technique needs work."

Hart just looked at them ruefully and didn't answer her this time.

Ianto had already turned to go upstairs, tucking his gun into his jacket as he walked. Jack touched his back briefly as he passed in an almost unconscious gesture of intimacy.

"We have to go," Jack told Buffy simply, and stood aside to let her go ahead of him. He shot Hart one more dark look before following them up.

Buffy grumbled as she headed up the stairs, "Please tell me I get to _really_ kick his ass when we get back? He's not even a good kisser and now his lip trick's making me feel all funky..." She was clearly not a happy camper. Only a good dose of violence and caffeine could fix her mood now.

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose and called up the stairs, "Ianto, will you get her a dose of the antitoxin, please?"

Ianto looked back and nodded, heading into the medical bay.

"Sit down," Jack told Buffy. The instruction wasn't particularly sharp, but it wasn't particularly warm either. "Between the vision earlier and the poison now, we don't need you falling over and cracking your head."

Myffanwy squawked and swooped across the ceiling as if she were agreeing with him and he almost cracked a smile. He nodded towards the flying reptile. "See? You don't have to take _my_word for it," he joked wearily.

Buffy smirked slightly as she dropped into a chair, putting a hand to her head. It felt like she'd had too much to drink - she couldn't even begin to imagine what a Slayer-sized dose would feel like. Poor Gwen, for having actually experienced it. No wonder the other woman seemed to have a special look of disgust reserved just for their guest.

"Yeah, right," she said in an equally weary, yet playful tone. "I saw you slip her dark chocolate earlier, don't even try it."

Gwen came back into the room, in the midst of checking her pockets to make sure she had everything she needed, and asked distractedly, "Why did I just see Ianto heading to the-" One look at Buffy made her stop and frown. "What'd he do _now_?" she asked, her voice dark and clearly unamused.

"Just your favourite trick," Jack told her distastefully.

Ianto returned with the antitoxin and injected it carefully into Buffy's arm. It would still take a few minutes for it to course through her system and bring her back to normal. Well, her body could process the antitoxin in the back seat of the car. He helped her up from her chair, holding on to her arm to steady her as Ianto grabbed a couple of things from his desk and they all headed out to the SUV.

Buffy didn't bother to mention that her body would have been able to get rid of the drug on its own because, well, yeah, it could have, but it would have taken a while and she really didn't feel like having the hangover from hell for the next few hours, especially when there was work to do.

She slumped onto the back seat of the SUV and waved away Gwen's look of concern as the woman climbed in on the other side. "I'll be fine," she informed her. "Doesn't pack too much of a punch on me, but wait 'til you see the bruises on _him_ when we get back." She couldn't help but smirk lazily before turning to lean into the door. "Wake me when we get there," she mumbled as her eyes closed.

Gwen just shook her head in amazement.


	13. Good Old London Town - Part 1

**GOOD OLD LONDON TOWN - Part 1**

The three hour trip to London passed mostly in silence, though it was weary more than awkward. Ianto drove and Jack looked introspectively out his window. Hart had made him resort to being someone he liked to tell himself he wasn't anymore. He hadn't had to actually _hurt_ Hart. Hart had known that he _would_, at that point, and that had been enough to loosen his tongue. The reason he had been reluctant to give that information to Gwen and Buffy, even though he'd gone there to have them save London from the potential explosion? If he was the only one that knew, they'd have had to bring him along. Jack had made it plain how much that was never going to happen. Hart's presence was hard enough on the team without, basically, locking them up with him. Not to mention the fact that this mission would be a big enough pain in their asses without having to babysit a rogue Time Agent who more than likely had ulterior motives.

Ianto pulled up in front of a small hotel. It was discreet and tucked away on a small London street. They weren't there to be noticed. Jack could see the closest Tube Station from his seat in the car and they weren't far from the city's famous tourist areas, but they weren't right in the middle of any of them either. He approved, but he'd never doubted Ianto's abilities when it came to logistics. The man simply had a rare gift for organizing things.

Gwen and Buffy were in one room, Jack and Ianto in another across the hall from them. Jack told Gwen and Buffy to come across the hall in about half an hour, once they'd all had a chance to settle in. They had to discuss the plan for the next morning. When he entered his own room, Ianto had already quietly started putting their things away and setting up his laptop on the table. Jack slipped his coat off and dropped it on the bed.

He watched Ianto for a moment while he crouched on the other side of the table, unplugging the small hotel coffee maker so he could plug in the laptop. He stood up and stopped short when he realized Jack was just sort of... staring at him.

"Are you alright?" he asked a little warily.

"Yep," Jack answered, still just watching him.

He glanced down a little self-consciously, straightening his waistcoat slightly, rumpled as it was from him crawling around under the table.

Jack didn't even try to stop his first genuine smile of the afternoon at that. It was so _him_. "Is there anything I can do to help?" he offered.

"Oh," Ianto said, looking, truthfully, a little relieved. He glanced around at the bags and cases littering the area and finally had Jack unpack some of the equipment.

**III**

Buffy's nap in the car had left her feeling groggy and in desperate need of caffeine. At least the hotel had provided a small complimentary bag of coffee to go with the coffee maker, which Buffy immediately attacked while Gwen made a quick call to the Rhys. It was cute, really, how the two of them interacted, and she could see the leaps and bounds that had been made in their relationship when she compared the now to Jack's stories. (It had also been made clear to her through those stories just how deeply Jack felt for Gwen, and she could see why.)

"How's the hubby?" Buffy asked casually as she perched on one of the beds while listening to the little sputters coming from the coffee pot. If only it would work faster...

Gwen smiled happily, still in her newlywed phase for the most part, and replied, "Worried, but better now than I've rung. Told him I'd call again when we when were heading back."

"Bet he wasn't too happy about that," Buffy teased knowingly, remembering the early months of her relationship with Spike, when they'd both been off on separate escapades and been overly worried about the other. It had taken some leaps of trust on both their parts, but now they were at a point in their life together when they could go days without speaking to each other, even weeks, and not completely freak out over it. Besides, when they finally _did_ get to talk to or even see each other... Well, absence didn't exactly make the heart grow fonder, but it did make the sex better.

Lowering herself into a chair by the window, Gwen shook her head, still smiling, and laughed quietly. "He's getting better though, I have to say. Few months ago, he'd have complained himself senseless. He nearly turned blue once."

Buffy laughed with amusement as she reached for two coffee cups that were, thankfully, perfectly clean. "I'd have _paid_ to see that!"

**III**

Ianto loosened his tie absently, opening the top button of his shirt with a flick of his thumb, as he connected one of Tosh's souped up scanners to the computer. Jack was mildly disappointed._He_ liked being the one who made Ianto look all rumpled and undone. Still, it was a little warm and stuffy in the room and the computer equipment was only going to exacerbate that. He walked over to the window and slid it open. Their rooms were on the fifth floor and the open window afforded them the sound of cars and people on the street below, but not _too_ loudly.

"I don't know if that'll pick up anything while the Warp Star is dormant," Jack said with a nod towards the scanner, but it's worth a try."

"The buyer is a collector. It might pick up other items he's got, if nothing else," Ianto pointed out. "Other things he perhaps shouldn't have..."

"Good thinking," Jack told him approvingly.

**III**

After a few more minutes of girl talk and a round of coffee that wasn't anything like Ianto's coffee, Buffy told Gwen she was going to pop downstairs to get some air and finish waking up. Grabbing her light coat, she headed out, riding down in the elevator with an elderly woman and her husband who commented on Buffy's 'charming' accent. The charming was dripping with sarcasm and she wanted to whack the woman in the head with something sharp, like she'd done to that demon at the Double Meat Palace.

She was so glad she'd moved up in the job world.

A slow stroll down the street allowed her to take in the sounds of the traffic on the street, the myriad of accents from the people she was passing, and a smell that just reminded her of London. She'd only been to the city twice before, both times involving helping to set up and then subsequently work out the kinks of the New Council's branch there, but she did remember the smell of the place. She blamed Spike for pointing it out to her in the first place.

**III**

Jack stood looking out the window and, even from that height, recognized Buffy down on the street. He frowned, briefly wondering where she was going, then glanced at his watch and decided he wouldn't say anything unless she was late for their meeting in ten minutes' time.

He turned away from the window. Ianto was still setting up all of Torchwood's delicate and complicated equipment. Again, Jack felt a small pang of disappointment, because all their Do Not Disturb sign was probably going to be keeping the Housekeeping staff from walking in on was their top secret junk. They were going to be in London long enough to track down their wayward Warp Star, then it was back to Cardiff with them. No rest for the weary.

Jack shook himself out of that train of thought. London always made him nostalgic for those relatively carefree days he spent there during the war, back when he was a 'free agent', after he left the Time Agency. Sure there were air raids and his cover as an airman required a certain amount of soldiering, but he still had a lot of free time. London was _fun_.

Jack watched Ianto work, his attention focused entirely on the task at hand, and wondered if his lover even remembered what that kind of fun _felt_ like. Jack hadn't known him before Lisa. He'd often wondered what the younger man was _like_ before he'd taken on that terrible secret.

Ianto finished his immediate task and looked up to find Jack watching him again. "What?" he asked suspiciously.

"I want to go out with you," he said plainly. "In London. But we don't have time."

A myriad of expressions passed across Ianto's face in quick succession before he finally settled on fiddling with the device he'd just connected with a pleased smile that he kept mostly to himself while he simply said "Oh."

**III**

Buffy wandered a bit further, then began to turn back - she _really_ didn't want to be late, had just needed a few minutes to herself - when she noticed a little shop selling pastries at the corner. She didn't even know what time it was, but she figured a little snack wouldn't bother anyone, especially when who knew when they might have time to eat an actual meal in between saving London and whatever other disaster was overly likely to crop up.

Reaching into her pocket to pull out the money she'd stuffed in there when she'd left her apartment that morning, she pulled out the wadded bundle and was struggling to sort it out when a few coins dropped to the pavement with metallic clings. Two rolled away from her, disappearing under the shoes of passersby... but one circled back, rolling in front of her and finally coming to a stop. She frowned at it, crouching down and reaching out to pick it up...

Buffy froze, her hand held out above the coin. Just like in her vision, only... That wasn't good. She grabbed the coin and raced back to the hotel, not bothering with the elevator and instead flying up the stairs.

Jack caught that little secret smile and stepped closer, leaning across the corner of the table to set a tender kiss on Ianto's lips, which was returned immediately. He rested his fingertips along Ianto's jaw and was about to move around the corner of the table when the door flew open with a bang. Jack had left it propped open a crack with the deadbolt because they were expecting Gwen and Buffy for the meeting.

He didn't withdraw entirely at first, only turned his head to see who had felt the need to make such an abrupt and dramatic entrance.

Buffy was only very slightly out of breath, but there was a hint of panic in her expression. Her dreams had never been this easily understood before, or this quick to actually come to fruition. Hell, they weren't even _dreams_ anymore. What had happened to change things so drastically? Was it because of her exposure to the Rift? It was the only possibility Willow had come up with that had made any real sense.

"We need to hurry," she told the two men who had obviously been in the middle of something, or maybe just the beginnings of the middle, she couldn't be sure. Either way, she was sorry to have interrupted, but there really hadn't been much of a choice. "Part of my vision just happened."

Jack stood up straight, turning to face Buffy entirely. "What do you mean?" he asked. "We don't even know where to _look_ for the thing yet." He glanced past Buffy to the door, then looked at Buffy again. "Go get Gwen," he told her.

She nodded and turned without arguing, pulling out her key to quickly open the door across from theirs and call out, "Gwen!" to get the other woman's attention. Gwen looked up from the file she'd been reading and immediately stood, tossing the papers to the side and striding quickly across the room and out into the hall so both women could file into the other room.

Jack stood in the centre of the room with his arms crossed. Ianto was still on the far side of the table, hands on his hips. When Gwen and Buffy came in, Jack looked straight at Buffy.

"What _exactly_ happened in your vision, and what part came true?" he asked without preamble.

Gwen shut the door behind them and Buffy fisted her hands in her long hair, dislodging her earpiece enough that she just unhooked it and tossed it angrily at the bed. Not the wall, the bed, so Ianto wouldn't kill her later. Taking a deep breath, she said, "I was... in the middle of a street, a big, busy street, with lots of people and traffic. I don't... know which one, but I knew it was London because of those stupid giant buses that kinda freak me out." She was on the verge of rambling, which was very unlike her, but this New Vision Girl thing was really giving her the wiggins. "I saw that gorgeous little gemstone rolling on the pavement toward me. I reached out to pick it up, but someone beat me to it. That someone being the Queen."

She looked at the three of them and made a frustrated noise at the back of her throat. "I know, it doesn't make much sense, but _believe_ me, they're usually a lot more cryptic than that," she grumbled. "When I was downstairs, I dropped some change, and one of the coins... It did the _exact same_ thing the Warp Star in my vision did. And, I know, it's not a direct translation, but it... It _felt_ the same."

Buffy was left feeling stupid and wondering how much of it they would believe. These were people who dealt with science, not magic, and they had absolutely no reason to believe her. She felt like she was back in high school, back when the prophetic dreams had been at their high point and yet they'd still mostly been brushed aside. They were going to think she was an absolute idiot.

Whether they believed her or not, at this point, wasn't evident on any of their faces.

"Where did this happen?" he asked. "The thing with the coin. Just down the street?" He nodded towards the window for emphasis.

"Yeah," she said quietly, her shoulders hunching slightly under the weight of her own insecurities. Despite the years since, she still felt the pain of when the Scoobies had abandoned her during the last days of the War with the First. She was a twenty-eight year old woman who was terrified of being rejected again by her friends and teammates because they thought her incompetent and not worthy of their trust. "But I don't know if it's a location thing or just a sequence of events. It's different every time. And they're not usually so... straight-forward. I think the Rift might have... changed them. It would explain why I had this one while I was awake. As far as I know, that's never happened to a Slayer before." It only added to her uncertainty about the entire situation.

Jack nodded and turned to Ianto. "Do a scan for alien tech and start with the immediate area, working outwards from this location."

Ianto nodded and was doing it before Jack finished talking.

Jack looked at Buffy. "This is _London_. We're going to get some false hits just scanning for alien tech. There's all kinds of alien crap floating around this city. Ianto and I will look into that end of things. I want you to go with Gwen to the buyer's home address. See if he's there and, if he is, find out what he did with the item he bought. Don't mention the Warp Star until you find out whether he already found it or not. If it's still concealed, maybe you can slip it out of there with him being none the wiser. I was going to wait until tomorrow, because he'd be more likely to be home on a Saturday morning, but if your vision is trying to tell us something, maybe the message is that we don't have that kind of time."

Relief didn't even begin to describe what Buffy felt at Jack's words and Gwen's and Ianto's nods of acceptance. They weren't questioning her, calling her out on all the holes and possibilities that it could mean absolutely nothing. They were trusting their teammate and it... It meant the world to her.

"Thank you," she said to Jack after Gwen had turned to go back across the hall to grab their things. She started to leave as well, then suddenly turned back, a very serious expression on her face. "Jack, if we need backup... Torchwood isn't alone anymore." She was offering him something that only _she_ would be able to offer, and only he had the power to take her up on it.

"I hope it won't come to that," Jack told her. "But I'll keep it in mind," he added with a reassuring smile.

Buffy echoed Jack's smile with one of her own before leaving the room to follow Gwen down the hall. She'd grabbed the buyer's address in the room; it wasn't far from the hotel, they'd be able to take public transport. They hurried down the stairs and along the street until they reached a main road and hopped the first bus that happened by.

Ianto worked at the computer in silence until he found a couple of possible leads. They'd have to check them out in person. He got up and rebuttoned his top button and straightened his tie before grabbing his jacket.

It hadn't escaped Jack's notice that, while he didn't seem outright _troubled_, Ianto had been more quiet than normal since they'd left the Hub that afternoon. He didn't know if he should ask Ianto or Buffy what had happened, or if he should just tap into the Hub's security systems and watch it himself. Or if he should maybe leave it alone, which was what he'd been _trying_ to do. Maybe Ianto was just tired; it had been a busy day. There'd been nothing aloof in the brief kiss he'd managed to initiate before Buffy had burst in. Maybe Hart's presence was making Jack paranoid. He grabbed his own coat off the bed and they headed downstairs.

**III**

Riding one of the giant red buses that freaked her out was not helping Buffy much in the staying calm in the face of an impending apocalypse. Once they'd gotten off at a very ritzy looking street, though, and she was back on her own two feet, she was much better. Much being a figurative estimation, of course.

"It's that one over there," Gwen said, pointing at a building down the street. They hurried forward, not wanting to waste any time in case it turned out to be a dead end. Gwen knocked on the door, a loud, solid sound that Buffy could hear reverberating in the wood.

She had a bad feeling about this.

Gwen was about to knock again when the door opened and a man who looked to be in his early thirties (very handsome, very fit, Buffy could see why Hart had dealt with him) appeared behind it. "Excuse me," Gwen began in her proper voice left over from her Police Constable days, "we don't mean to bother you, but are you-"

She hadn't even managed to finish the sentence before the man was running from the door and into the house. Buffy reacted after only a second of processing what was happening, taking off after him, dodging furniture and halls until she came to a back door that was still swinging from being flung open. She could hear Gwen clamoring behind her but couldn't stop to wait for her to catch up.

**III**

Jack and Ianto walked through the narrow streets, Ianto keeping an eye on the signals they'd picked up using his PDA. The first one took them to a small shop in an even smaller dingy side street, if it _could_ be called a 'street'. It was more like an alley. Jack opened the door and stepped through first, immediately finding himself amongst shelves and carelessly stacked piles of bric-a-brac. The shop was dimly lit and dust danced in the beams of sunlight that _did_ manage to infiltrate the inside of the shop. It smelled musty. He turned to look at Ianto.

"It's coming from the back," Ianto said, nodding towards the counter where a cash register sat, a beaded curtain not unlike the one in the tourist office covering the doorway behind it. Nobody was at the counter. Nobody had come from behind the curtain to greet what must have been the rare sight of customers walking through the door. Ianto tucked the PDA into his jacket and they both stepped towards the counter.

"Hello?" Jack called out. Nobody answered. Someone had to be here somewhere: the front door had been open. "_Hello_?" Jack called again, a little more forcefully. He looked at Ianto, who only shrugged in response. Jack lead him around the counter and cautiously pushed aside the beaded curtain. "Hello?" he called again, as they stepped into a narrow corridor that smelled just as musty as the shop, if not more so. A door was slightly ajar to the left. Jack pushed it open. It was a small toilet. They continued down the hallway. It ended at a small, dingy living space. There was a couch and an armchair and an old television on a rickety stand. A kettle sat on a folding table in one corner. A middle-aged man sat on the couch. He looked at them wide-eyed. Jack just raised an eyebrow at him.

"You can't be back here!" he man said, but he didn't get up and he looked a little frightened more than angry.

"Oh, I think we _can_," Jack told him.

The man's brow furrowed in confusion.

"Who _are_ you?" he asked, a little more timidly.

"Torchwood," Jack replied simply.

The man's eyes widened and he didn't respond.

"Where is it?" Jack asked him firmly, but not forcefully.

The man's eyes flicked over to a cupboard near the folding table.

**III**

Okay, so. Plan A had just hopped a plane to Crapville. Buffy's instincts kept her moving as she did her best to analyze the situation.

Buyer Guy, whose actual name she couldn't remember, had gotten one look at her and panicked. She was certain it had been herself and not Gwen that had caused the flight response, and the only thing she could think of was that he hadn't been a very good boy and having the Head Slayer of the New Council show up on his doorstep... Well, she'd gotten that reaction before, so it wasn't anything new. Demons still scattered when she walked into a bar in Cleveland.

By now they were on the street, weaving through crowds of people who seemed particularly irate about being shoved to the side. He turned into an alley and Buffy followed, finally able to pick up a bit of speed without obstacles in her way... But halfway into the alley, grey and wet and smelling particularly horrible, the man stopped and turned, a gun held tightly in his hand, pointed straight at Buffy. She froze, nearly flailing as her body tried to keep moving forward, both hands held up in a surrendering gesture.

"Whoa, hey, what's with the gun?" she demanded, hoping to get some answers before he decided to give her the second bullet-induced trauma of her life. "We just wanted to talk."

"Talk?!" the man answered incredulously, and Buffy could see the way he was beginning to shake. "If they'd just wanted to talk, they wouldn't have sent you. I know who you are, I know who you _work_ for!" He was starting to sound hysterical and Buffy couldn't begin to think of what to say.

Continuing in that trembling tone, the gun shook precariously as he said, "I didn't know when I bought it. I _didn't know_!" The words were starting to run together. "But I sold it, I sold it and _it won't be my fault!_"

Buffy could only stare in shock as the man suddenly turned the gun on himself and pulled the trigger.

**III**

Jack walked out of the small, musty shop shaking his head. He turned the artifact over in his hands. It was an alien power source, but it wasn't dangerous. He'd seen loads of them. Still, can't have them just floating around London. He tossed it to Ianto as they emerged into the wider cross street. Ianto caught it easily as he stepped up beside Jack. He was frowning at his PDA, as the other two signals in the area seemed less likely than the one they'd gotten from the object he was holding. He looked at Jack and shook his head. Jack shrugged and they headed back to the hotel. They could continue widening the scan, but mostly he was hoping that Gwen and Buffy had managed to locate the buyer and retrieve the Warp Star. That would certainly make things a whole lot easier than their missions, as a rule, tended to be.

Gwen had lost Buffy after the third street the chased had turned onto, rather out of her depth in a city she didn't know anywhere near as well as Cardiff. It also didn't help that the two of them were easily faster than Gwen, which really was a bit of feat in itself. Pausing to catch both her breath and bearings, she lifted a hand to the comm device in her ear and tried contacting Buffy.

Nothing.

She tried again and still received no answer.

Alright... So maybe her own device had been damaged or something had malfunctioned? She tried again, this time with the others. "Jack? Ianto? Can you hear me?"

Jack was just following Ianto into their hotel room when Gwen's voice came over there comms. He looked at Ianto, then touched the device at his ear.

"Gwen? We can hear you. What's wrong? Did you find the buyer?"

"Found him," she confirmed, "but he took one look at us and fled. Buffy's pursuing, but I can't reach her. Thought it might be a problem with the comms.

Gwen took a look around and read off the name of the street she was on.

Jack now glanced at Ianto with a degree of worry. "Do you have any idea which way she went?" he asked Gwen.

Ianto, in the meantime, was putting the alien power supply down on the nightstand and noticed something on the bed, nestled between the top of the bedspread and the pillows. He reached over and grabbed it, just looking at it for a moment. Buffy's comm device.

"Jack," he said.

Jack turned. "Is that...?"

"Yes," Ianto practically growled. She took off her comm and, come to think of it, he had a vague memory of seeing her do it, but it hadn't really registered that she'd _left the hotel without her comm_.

Jack held out a placating hand. "Don't worry," he said, slipping his mobile out of his pocket. "We'll give her a call on her phone."

"She doesn't have a phone," Ianto said tightly.

Jack stopped mid-dial. "What?"

"She killed her phone this afternoon."

"She _what_?" Jack said more forcefully.

"She threw it at the wall in the archive," Ianto told him. "Smashed it into about a hundred billion pieces. She doesn't _have_ a phone, she just had _this_." He held up the earpiece.

Jack ran a hand through his hair and cursed silently for what felt like a full minute. He touched his comm device again.

"Gwen, stay there. We're coming to you."


End file.
